Following several years as artistic director of the Radio France choir, the esteemed Slovenian conductor Martina Batič became principal conductor of the DR Vokalensemblet choir – a vocal ensemble run by the Danish public radio and television broadcaster. This concert, during which she will lead the NFM Choir singers, will be an opportunity to celebrate 2024 as the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth, and to present a piece by one of the best-known contemporary Slovenian composers – Ambrož Čopi. Polish music will also be represented by a remarkable work by Karol Szymanowski. 6 Kurpie Songs are a result of the composer’s meeting with the folklore of the Kurpie residents of Puszcza Zielona and Puszcza Biała on the Mazowsze region.

The concert will open with one of Johann Sebastian Bach's motets. Among the composer’s output, works of this genre are rather modestly represented – Bach usually wrote them with funeral ceremonies in mind. The incredibly sublime eight-voice Komm, Jesu, komm is the only one in which the composer did not use a biblical text – instead he set Paul Thymich’s poem to music. We will remain in the sphere of Protestant spirituality by listening to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Die Deutsche Liturgie – a study of the liturgy prepared for the choir of Berlin Cathedral. Anton Bruckner’s choral legacy, which occupies an important place in his oeuvre alongside the symphonies, will be represented by the motet Christus factus est. Despite its small size, this work uses the full dynamic range, leading to a spectacular culmination.
Ambrož Čopi, a student of Dane Škerl, is a distinguished Slovenian composer, teacher, conductor and promoter of choral music. In Slovenia he is a mentor to many composers of the young generation. His works will be represented by Totus tuus – a work for men’s choir created in 1994. The last of the foreign compositions will come from Frank Martin. The Swiss composer was fascinated by the possibility of a musical synthesis of conventional tonality and the twelve-tone technique. In his 1950 Songs of Ariel, he set music to fragments of William Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest.