Dutch Students Chamber Choir

With glowing and harmonious soundscapes in Copland’s In the Beginning, serene sounds by Bruckner and joyful psalms by Mendelssohn and Ives, the NSK sings this year an ode to the beginning. This is the starting point for a trilogy in which human existence is central, conducted by the new conductor Béni Csillag. The choir sings enthusiastically Gottwalds a cappella-arrangement of Haydns Die Schöpfung, the musical Garden of Eden where the sun never sets. But when Eve eats the forbidden fruit, this heralds the end of paradise. Then follow sad and intimate works, such as the spiritual Sometimes I feel like a motherless child and the therefrom derived Sometimes by the young Bulgarian composer Georgi Sztojanov, who wrote this work specially for the NSK . In this piece mezzosoprano Leonie van Rheden with her warm and powerful voice unites good and evil, light and darkness. It is symbolic for the programme, in which emotion and the conflicts which come with a beginning are central : from being cursed to joy, transported and coming to rest.