Balthasar Neumann Choir / Iveta Apkalna / Lionel Sow

After making his Elbphilharmonie debut with the Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble, conductor Lionel Sow returns to the Hamburg International Music Festival with the choir alone. The French conductor has a deep passion for German choral repertoire, and in keeping with this year’s festival theme – »End« – he has curated a concert programme centred around the enduring fascination with death and final things in music.


At the heart of the evening is Hugo Distler’s »Totentanz« (Dance of Death), inspired by a large mural in Lübeck’s Marienkirche, where Distler once worked as an organist. In the piece, Death meets twelve people of different social ranks, dances with them, and speaks to them. Distler set these baroque texts to music in 1934, creating a fragile, floating choral sound deeply shaped by the fear and uncertainty following the rise of the Nazi regime. The original mural was destroyed in the war in 1942 – the same year Distler took his own life. A tragic coincidence, almost fatefully intertwined with the music.

In the tradition of wild and virtuosic dances of death, Harald Feller’s Danse Macabre for organ and percussion offers a striking counterpoint to the a cappella choral works. The programme is framed by music by Johann Bach and Johann Michael Bach – early representatives of the great Bach family – as well as by Heinrich Schütz. Deeply rooted in the 17th-century Christian faith, their texts express a longing for eternal peace in the presence of the divine.

PERFORMERS

Balthasar-Neumann-Chor und -Solisten choir

Michael Schmidt-Casdorff flute

Veith Kloeters percussion

Iveta Apkalna organ

Joachim Król narrator

Lionel Sow conductor

PROGRAM

»Totentanz & Hoffnungsschein«

Johannes Brahms
Schnitter Tod

Harald Feller
Danse macabre for Organ and Percussion

Thierry Escaich
Motet II

Johann Sebastian Bach
Komm süßer Tod, komm sel’ge Ruh’, BWV 478

Hugo Distler
Totentanz, Op. 12/2

Johann Sebastian Bach
Sarabande

Max Reger
O Tod, wie bitter bist du