Tit er jeg glad // DR Pigekoret & Den Danske Strygekvartet

Tit er jeg glad / Brudestykke fra Fanø
Carl Nielsen / B.S. Ingemann
Arrangement: Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen

From the concert at Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara on November 12, 2019
– presented by UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures

Danish String Quartet & DR Danish National Girls’ Choir
Video: Mikkel Suppras
Sound engineer: Barbara Hirsch

Programme:
Quartet no. 15, 1st movement Dmitri Shostakovich
I Lie David Lang/Joseph Rolnick
Hil dig, Frelser og Forsoner C.C. Hoffman/N.F.S. Grundtvig, arr. Phillip Faber
String quartet no. 3, 1st movement Alfred Schnittke
Kringsat af fjender (To the Youth) Nordahl Grieg/Otto Mortensen, arr. Jakob Lægaard
String quartet no. 3, 2nd movement Alfred Schnittke
Puer natus est Jexper Holmen
Fuga a 3 soggetti from 'Kunst der Fuge' J.S. Bach
Vor deinen Thron Tret’ ich J.S. Bach
Sleep Eric Whitacre
String quartet no. 3, 3rd movement Alfred Schnittke
I himmelen (In heaven’s hall) Karin Rehnqvist
Tit er jeg glad & brudestykke Carl Nielsen/B.S. Ingemann, Trad., arr. Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen

Artist statement:
Danish National Girls' Choir and the Danish String Quartet in Santa Barbara

"A couple of years ago we were invited to perform with the Danish National Girls Choir for their yearly summer concert. We didn't know exactly what to expect. Probably our idea of a girls choir was quite traditional: Polite girls with good posture, singing beautifully. But what we experienced at that concert was quite different. The girls could certainly sing, but they were also highly original. They presented a different, ambitious and exciting concert and really showed us – and the audience – what a choir can be.

A typical cliché about classical music is that it is easygoing and nice: 'Oh darling, give me a glass of wine, and let us relax with some nice generic background classical music'. On paper the concert tonight looks just like that. A string quartet and a girls choir sounds like asking for extra cream on a Frappuccino.

But that is not exactly how things are going to play out.

The string quartet as a medium is capable of expressing a wealth of characters and emotions, light as well as dark ones. This is why composers have been writing music for this ensemble for hundreds of years. And do you think singing girls are just adorable and cute? Think about the girl twins from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'.

The concert tonight emerges from a singular dark point. A lonely violin with the most melancholic statement in music history. From there we will expand, open up and travel through all characters imaginable to end up in a bright sphere of light. The music will be old and new, beautiful and weird, some of it from Denmark. Classical music is a reflection of everything that life entails: A string quartet can sound ugly and a girls choir has more power than any army of men.

Put down your wine and come play with us."
- Danish String Quartet



About the Danish National Girls’ Choir:
50 talented girls aged 16-22, several centuries of Danish song tradition and a young, fervently ambitious conductor, Phillip Faber: These are the most important ingredients in the DR Danish National Girls’ Choir (DR PigeKoret) – one of the world’s finest girls’ choirs and one of Denmark’s strongest musical brands. The DR Danish National Girls’ Choir was established in 1938, as part of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). The choir is proudly under the patronage of Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark.

See more:
www.drkoncerthuset.dk/dr-pigekoret/danish-national-girls-choir/
Facebook: @drpigekoret
Instagram: @dr.pigekoret