All Saints Concert with Karitas

All Saints Concert with Karitas
All Saints' Day falls on November 1, with darkness gradually taking a harder hold as we enter the final month of autumn. The days are getting shorter, the leaves are wilting, and nature is going dormant. On this occasion, Karitas invites visitors to Nørrebro Library to stop by and enjoy a thoughtful and present choir concert.

In addition to the change of seasons, the All Saints season is also about looking back at what has happened, which is why we start with Ola Gjello's work Days of Beauty. Here, the lyricist Emily Brontë looks back at the time that was, which is also the theme of the concert's next work; Amy Beach's Nunc Dimitis, Simeon's prayer of thanksgiving for death, which follows a long and hard life in the service of the good, and here becomes a beautiful and serene state heading towards the afterlife. Afterwards we hear Gjello's modern classic Ubi caritas, which is a meditation on caring, caritas, which is also found in the choir's name and artistic starting point.
Martha Bach Gislinge's newly written work Afturábak (Icelandic: “backwards”), written for Karitas, explores how choral voices can function in an almost unison timbre field, within a deliberately limited ambitus. The text consists of phonetic fragments of Nordic languages and functions not as meaning, but as timbre and echo. The music moves between communal unison and individually fluid passages. The voices approach each other without quite coming together. They try to become one, but always remain almost.
The works in the last part of the concert illuminate the various musical currents that were present in the 20th century. Franz Biebel's late modern Ave Maria (1964) is set against the works of Amy Beach (1891), whose tonal language clearly belongs to the late Romantic period. Following this, conductor Sara Amalie Heise's evocation of Maria follows through thorns going that is a simple but touching German folk tone. Finally, the concert concludes with the evening song Abendlich nur rauscht der Wald by Fanny Mendelssohn and the Danish modern classic Lost Am I Still by Kathrine Muff Enevoldsen and with lyrics by Stine Pilgaard. Enjoy!

The event is supported by Nørrebro Local Committee

The event is free and requires no registration