Found in translation

Helsinki Chamber Choir

Nils Schweckendiek, conductor
 

In collaboration with: Hardanger Musikkfest, Choral Season concert series
Tickets Hardanger: TicketCo
Tickets Helsinki: coming soon

The Helsinki Chamber Choir and Nils Schweckendiek will be artists-in-residence at the Hardanger Music Festival in Norway, performing a wide-ranging repertoire ranging from traditional songs to world premieres in four concerts across three days. More information: https://www.hardangermusikkfest.no
 

Found in translation
 

Translations offer us a glimpse of other cultures and the thoughts of people who speak a language other than our own, but some things remain untranslatable. The starting point for this programme was Lotta Wennäkoski’s Ommel, whose five movements set the same poem in five different languages. The sound of each language and national musical traditions inspired Wennäkoski to approach the same thoughts from different angles. 
 

Like others before him, Kalevi Aho found profound inspiration in the texts of the 13th-century Persian poet and mystic Rumi, setting them in Finnish translations by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila. For his new work, Tze Yeung Ho looked even further back in time, drawing on texts supposedly collected by Confucius to create Blå er din krage ("Blue is your collar"). The composer says: “Translations and multiple (re)interpretations of the written ancient lyrics have become important sources for understanding the original texts. Even in its original Chinese, the meanings of each character and line differ greatly from reader to reader.” Einojuhani Rautavaara’s evergreen Lorca Suite completes the programme, which is presented in association with the Choral Season concert series.