Light and Darkness

For us in the North, light means a lot. There is nothing as magical as the bright, Nordic summers, where it is as if we live more than at other times of the year. The contrast to the bright summers – the dark winters – is also an important part of what defines us. And even here in the southern end of the Nordic region, in Denmark, light and darkness in winter occasionally merge into a higher unity in the wonderful phenomenon we call the Northern Lights.

Ars Nova presents music by Nordic composers such as Karin Rehnqvist, Hugo Alfvén, C.E.F. Weyse and Bent Sørensen, but we also pay a visit to a couple of our neighbouring countries to the east and west with works by Scottish James McMillan, Estonian Arvo Pärt and Latvian Ēriks Ešenvalds. The program also includes Gregorio Allegri's Miserere, which is admittedly not Nordic, but was written for performance in the Catholic Tenebrae masses (shadow or dark masses).

The concert "Nordic Light and Darkness" is shaped around the day's passage from the early hours of the morning to the dusk of the night. Music that in its complexity and expression can seem violent, that can dazzle and seem overwhelming, and music that in its simplicity and clarity redeems and soothes. Perhaps the music should even be experienced with closed eyes, so that both light and darkness can find their place for the inner gaze. The light of the voice, the beauty of the music, and the inner peace.