Afslutningskoncert på Golden Days Festival.

It is particularly fitting that the closing concert of this year's Golden Days Festival takes place at the Workers' Museum, as the theme of this year's festival is indeed working life.

On this occasion, the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir presents an unusually versatile and exciting program that centers on the working people.

The main piece is a forgotten work that is now being brought out of the archives after more than a century and will be presented by former Social Democratic minister and member of parliament, Mogens Jensen.

This is a cantata, written in 1910 for one of the greatest workers' congresses of all time, held in Copenhagen, with the participation of some of history's most important socialist luminaries.

The workers' songs of various countries were compiled and arranged with piano accompaniment into a cantata in two parts, culminating in the “Marseillaise” - with Danish lyrics - that everyone could sing along to.

The work was performed at the Odd Fellow Palace by 500 worker singers from virtually all trades.

It could just as well have been workers from Copenhagen's many markets, and it was the street vendors' calls that inspired Luciano Berio to the virtuosic and vocally experimental cycle “Cries of London” for eight-part mixed choir. The seven relatively short and concentrated movements evoke associations with such street cries, with short phrases about money, garlic, and rouge, in Berio's unique musical language.

A more subdued and reflective crowd is encountered in Per Gunnar Petersson's newly composed work “The Prophet,” with texts from Kahlil Gibran's classic book of the same name.

In Gibran's little book, the departing wise man, the “prophet” of the title, stands one last time in the town square and answers the townspeople one by one as they stand there and ask him about all sorts of topics, from the great themes of life to the small details of everyday life. The wise man then conveys the essence of these topics in short, lyrical, and image-rich sentences.

Program:

Luciano Berio (1925 - 2003): Cries of London

Per Gunnar Petersson (b. 1954): Work with Love. (Text: Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet)

Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971): Three pieces for clarinet solo

A. C. Meyer (1858-1938)/ F. Hemme (1871 - 1961): CANTATA at the International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen 1910

Jørgen Jersild (1913-2004): De lyse Nætter (Text: Åge Berntsen)

Per Gunnar Petersson: Aftonland (Text: Pär Lagerkvist)

Performers:
Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir
Clarinet: Jonas Frølund
Piano: Jakob Lorenzen
Conductor: Mogens Dahl