Männerchöre

With Van Gogh in Me, the Netherlands Chamber Choir presents an experience in which the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and Gustav Klimt come to life to the music of the great Romantic and early 20th century composers such as Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Mahler… and, in a world premiere, a transcription for a cappella choir of Satie's first Gymnopédie. Originally written for solo piano, this work, which is known and played throughout the world, finds a new magical and celestial dimension in this new version for choir. Mentioning the name of Van Gogh immediately evokes in each of us a colour, a landscape, a sensation… Hence the idea of creating an immersive audiovisual experience: the choir approached an Italian collective, fuse*, to link images and sounds to the emotions of the musicians and the audience… fuse* developed an algorithm based on the works of Van Gogh and Klimt by recording their styles, colours, brushstrokes… then, during the concert, collects the sound of the choir but also biometric data that analyses the emotional state of the audience, the singers and the conductor, and creates visuals in real time, an astonishing show of colours and shapes that mixes sound, images and emotions… The visual of the album is inspired by these experiments.

Of all the nearly forgotten music by Mendelssohn, the most nearly completely forgotten is his music for chorus. Only his songs come close to being as almost entirely ignored, but because a few of them have earned a place in the recital hall, even they have a more prominent place in the repertoire. This 10-disc Brilliant set of Mendelssohn's complete choral works featuring the Chamber Choir of Europe under Nicol Matt addresses this problem even though it may not solve it. The performances are uniformly excellent. The Choir has a smooth tone and superb diction and Matt elicits from them polished balanced and ardent interpretations.