Göteborgs Konserthus Tones of Reconciliation

Event has already taken place. Let the notes from the mighty concert hall organ accompany you on an inner journey. American organist Kimberly Marshall is our guide in a meditative lunch concert in the sign of reconciliation. A soulful new year for music.

Concert length: 1 h Scene: Stora salen
340-500 SEK Student 170-250 SEK Youth up to 29 170-250 SEK
Dates & Tickets
ListenProgramme & Participants

Event has already taken place

Let the notes from the mighty concert hall organ accompany you on an inner journey. American organist Kimberly Marshall is our guide in a meditative lunch concert in the sign of reconciliation. A soulful new year for music. 

Treat yourself to a day to refrain from distractions and duties. At this time of year occurs the Day of Atonement in Judaism, Yom Kippur, the day when we look inward and consider how we treat ourselves and each other. Tradition says that Yom Kippur is celebrated for one day as a holy conversation. At sunset, only you know where your choices will take you. 

At the organ concert Tones of reconciliation you get a meditative musical experience, regardless of who is asking the questions. The music that vibrates from the 9 000 pipes of the Great Hall organ ranges from contemplative prayer to explosive emotional cascades. 

Sitting at the organ is American organist Kimberly Marshall, celebrated internationally for her captivating concerts and a valued lecturer in the organ world. Kimblerly Marshall has visited Gothenburg several times and among other things she has made recordings with the North German Baroque organ in Örgryte Nya kyrka. 

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Get to know the organist Kimberly Marshall.


Get to know the music.

 

More than 9000 organ pipes

The organ is called “the queen of instruments” and for a good reason: no other acoustic instrument is so varied in sound and dynamics, from the weakest, solitary tone to massive chords that make it vibrate in floors and walls. Join the tour inside the fascinating instrument together with Hans Davidsson from Göteborg International Organ Academy!

Programme

Trad. Kol Nidre
The Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), hailed by his contemporaries as "the German Socrates", was a central figure in the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. In 1763 he was awarded the Berlin Academy's prize for his essay "On evidence in the metaphysical sciences". He was so highly regarded that Frederick the Great granted him the status of "protected Jew" (Schutzjude), so that he could live undisturbed in Berlin. But this privilege did not extend to his wife or his six children, four of whom left Judaism to assimilate into German society instead. In 1816, Moses' second son, Abraham, had his four children, including Felix Mendelssohn, baptized into the Reformed Protestant faith. This baptism had musical consequences. Felix became enveloped in Protestant musical culture and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, for which he became a champion. Like Bach, he composed preludes, fugues and sonatas for organ, often with contrapuntal techniques and elements of Lutheran chorales, something we hear in his first organ sonata, published in 1845, only two years before his death. Its first movement is interrupted by phrases from the Lutheran chorale "Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit" (What my God wills, may it always be) with a more muted timbre. Mendelssohn uses the same "antiphonal" effect between two organ keyboards in the third movement, a free recitative that leads directly into the concluding final movement, marked by brilliant arpeggios and virtuosic pedal playing. Kimberley Marshall
J S Bach O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross 3 min
Many of Johann Sebastian Bach's most profound organ works are based on Lutheran chorales. The composer had the ability to convey the spiritual content of the psalm text through the music, which we hear in the next two pieces on today's program. First, the penitential chorale "O Mensch, bewein' dein Sünde groß" (O man, bewail your great sin). Bach ornaments the melody so that it flows with great expressiveness, perhaps as a reflection of earthly distractions; at the end he instructs the organist to play extremely slowly, as dissonances are introduced into the falling melody. This creates a resounding depiction of the fall of humanity. Judaism is the world's first documented monotheistic religion. Abraham was called to destroy the false idols his father worshiped in order to follow one God, the creator of the universe. Belief in one God was taken up by Christianity and forms the basis of the Credo. Bach's setting of Luther's Credo paraphrase, the chorale "Wir glauben all an einen Gott", contains imitation of the melody, along with a powerful theme in the pedal that recurs in different pitches several times throughout the piece. The frequent repetitions of the melody and the pedal theme create a musical depiction of monotheism, which reverberates throughout the world. Kimberley Marshall
Atonement restores balance to life; by acknowledging and making amends for sins committed, man abandons his destructive behavior patterns and commits to a balanced lifestyle. Navajo composer Connor Chee explores this elusive sense of balance in his first organ work, Hózhó, which translates to "balance and beauty." Although the music is occasionally unbalanced in form and time signature, there is a balanced framework in that the opening melody returns at the end of the piece in retrograde form (ie "backwards"). In the words of the composer: "It returns the listener to the beginning of the piece with a melody that is essentially the same yet transformed over the course of the listening experience."
In 1956, the Jewish composer Herman Berlinski was a doctoral student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the city of New York, when he received a composition order for a work for the recently rebuilt organ in the city's Temple Emanu-El. He was inspired by a stone sculpture of the Burning Bush on the tower at the entrance of the seminary and chose this as the subject for the organ work. The third chapter of Exodus describes how Moses sees a bush that is constantly burning without being consumed by the fire. God's voice is heard from the bush, telling Moses that he will come to free the Israelites from their captivity in Egypt. When Moses asks in whose name he should lead the people, the voice answers with Tetragammon (the four-letter divine name). This is a holy name that is never pronounced by orthodox Jews, who instead use "ha Shem", the Hebrew word for "name". Berlinski constructed a rhythmic motif representing ha Shem and combined it with all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, to symbolize God's omnipresence. God's power to free his people from oppression is heard in trumpet fanfares, which Berlinski composed for the horizontal trumpet pipes in the facade that were added during the rebuilding of the organ in Temple Emanu-El. Kimberley Marshalll
Ashkenazi Jews (descendants of the Jews who in the Middle Ages settled in Germany and later in Eastern Europe) recite prayers for the dead during the Yom Kippur synagogue service. This service is called Yizkor, a Hebrew word meaning "May He [God] be remembered". In this spirit, today's program plays a soulful Elegy by William Grant Still, called "the doyen of African-American music". Elegy was one of two organ works commissioned from Still by the American Guild of Organists for its national convention in Los Angeles in 1962.
Today's program ends with the Exodus suite by African-American composer Sharon Willis. She wrote this work as a tribute to Harriet Tubman, who first managed to escape from slavery in 1849 and then returned to the South several times to help other slaves. Between 1849 and 1862, Tubman personally led more than 80 people to freedom; she helped them with housing and work in the north. Through her work as a spy for the Union Army, more than 700 slaves were freed. The Exodus suite has three movements, all of which contain musical material sung and danced to by American slaves. In the first movement, "Chronicles", we hear the melody "Go down, Moses", which is introduced in the pedal and builds up to a full-tone chordal movement. The middle movement, "Communion", begins and ends in a faint shade with another spiritual, "Let us break bread together". These soft phrases frame a double-pedal explosion of sound, perhaps evoking the hard work the slaves were forced to do. The last movement is party music in the African juba dance style, with lively syncopations. Kimberley Marshall
Saturday 23 September 2023: The event ends at approx. 13.30

Participants

Kimberly Marshall, USA, is known worldwide for her captivating programs and presentations of organ music. Her achievements were recognized by the Royal College of Organists in 2022 with their highest award. She is a skilled teacher who gives masterclasses internationally and is a professor at Arizona State University and Malmö Academy of Music. In 2019, Kimberly Marshall inaugurated the new Klais organ in St Petri Cathedral, Malmö, the largest instrument in Scandinavia. She performed and taught at the Gothenburg International Organ Academy in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and opened the Malmö Organ Festival in May 2022. In the same month, she gave the first guest concert at the Washington National Cathedral since the pandemic, to an enthusiastic audience. Kimberly Marshall has performed at many international conventions and concerts. She is a committed organ advocate and works to promote the instrument in both local and global contexts. From 1996 to 2000, Kimberly was project manager for the Organ Research Center in Gothenburg and gave an opening recital on the large middle tone organ in Örgryte church in 2000.
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24 August 2023 Kära publik

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