Nordlichter - Works for Choir a cappella: Nystedt, Grieg, Arnesen, Olsson and others

With its new a cappella programme "Nordlichter", the Kammerchor Baden-Württemberg turns to the choral music of Norway. From the second half of the 19th century, a flourishing civic musical culture began to take shape in Scandinavia, much as it did across Central Europe. Singing societies sprang up everywhere, united by a shared love of Norwegian folk music and poetry.

Beginning with Edvard Grieg, Norwegian composers started enriching this popular movement with their choral works. Figures such as Otto Olsson, Knut Nystedt, and Trond Kverno contributed over more than a century to the development of a distinctly Norwegian musical voice: meditative, clearly structured, yet full of emotional depth. That living tradition continues to bear fruit today in the deeply moving choral compositions of Ola Gjeilo and Kim André Arnesen.

The programme traces a path from Grieg's celebrated "Ave maris stella" through Gjeilo's "Northern lights" to Arnesen's "Even when he is silent" - mapping a fascinating world of choral tradition in which hope and longing keep resurfacing: the hope of not being lost in the darker sides of life. A compelling journey into the darkness and the lights of the North.