Northern Lights Programme Booklet
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Centre for Nordic Studies Northern Lights a festival of ideas & music k e l i B a n a J y b h p a r g o t o h 24 February—6 March 2013 P http://www.nordic-studies.group.shef.ac.uk ‘Northern Lights, a festival of ideas and music’ celebrates the establishment of the Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Sheffield. With it, we offer 200th birthday greetings to the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. The festival has a varied programme of lectures and concerts, and has been made possible by the generous sponsorship of Alan and Hely Sokolowski, to whom we are very grateful. The Centre for Nordic Studies aspires to support the understanding, use and enjoyment of Nordic languages and culture —and we welcome your ideas on how we can achieve it! Please write to us with your ideas at [email protected] Northern Lights is promoted and presented for the Centre for Nordic Studies by Artserve, Sheffield, who would like to thank Lone Kristensen, Cliff Alcock, Deborah Tilbrook, Matthew Holman, Louise Sørensen, Roddy Flint and Fiona Drew for their invaluable help. Northern Lights festival programme Sunday 24 February 2013, Firth Hall Rönsy (http://www.ronsy.net), a Finnish folk group Workshop for young and old, 3pm, Concert, 7.30pm Tuesday 26 February, Humanities Research Institute, 7pm Lecture by Professor Hugh Pyper ‘The Joy of Kierkegaard: a bicentenary appraisal’ Friday 1 March, St Mark's Church, Broomhill, 1pm Organ recital by Professor Andrew Linn The programme is built upon the theme of 'Migration Music', and includes music and images to mark the mass emigration from Scandinavia to the USA in the 19th century. The programme includes music by Grieg, Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Vaughan-Williams. Saturday 2 March, Firth Hall, 7.30pm A Celebration of Song A varied programme featuring Chloe Saywell, Rosie Williamson and Matthew Palmer, accompanied by the composer, George Nicholson. The concert includes the first performance of a newly commissioned piece by Jonathan Kirwan. Monday 4 March, Humanities Research Institute, 7pm Lecture by Professor Robert Stern ‘Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”’: Kierkegaard as a divine command theorist Tuesday 5 March, Humanities Research Institute, 7pm Lecture by Dr Oliver Johnson ‘Physical Fairytale: Finland's Jukola Relay’ Wednesday 6 March, Firth Hall, 7.30pm A choral and orchestral concert Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni overture and extracts Carl Nielsen: Suite Opus 1 Jean Sibelius: 2nd Symphony The Festival Orchestra, soloists Conducted by David Ross Sunday 24 February, Firth Hall, 3pm and 7.30pm Rönsy Helmi Camus – double bass, harmonium, voice Maija Kauhanen – kanteles, saxophone, harmonium, voice Kaisa Ristiluoma – accordions, voice Seamless ensemble playing, unbelievable solos, deep emotions, strong friendship. This is what the music of Rönsy is made of. The music leads you from refined chamber-folk to dance rhythms that knock the shoes off your feet. Rönsy is at home when relishing shades of minimalism as well as when diving into the depths of a virtuosic and rootsy beat. Spontaneity, subtlety and their no-bars attitude join hands in their masterfully structured arrangements. All the members of Rönsy studied at the prestigious Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department. The trio has toured extensively in Finland over the years and has also performed abroad. The group’s internationally acclaimed debut album was released in Summer 2010, and it received the ‘Kantele album of the year 2010’ award of the Finnish Kantele Association. http://www.ronsy.net Lecture programme Tuesday 26 February, Humanities Research Institute, 7pm Lecture by Professor Hugh Pyper ‘The Joy of Kierkegaard: a bicentenary appraisal’ Hugh Pyper’s book, ‘The Joy of Kierkegaard: Essays on Kierkegaard as a Biblical Reader’, was published by Equinox in October 2011. Monday 4 March, Humanities Research Institute, 7pm Lecture by Professor Robert Stern ‘Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”’: Kierkegaard as a divine command theorist Robert Stern’s book, ‘Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard’, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2011 This talk focuses on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, and consider in what way it might be read as adopting a divine command view of ethics: namely, that what is right for us to do is made right by God commanding us to do it. Kierkegaard's provocative account of the binding of Isaac by Abraham provides the context for this discussion. Tuesday 5 March, Humanities Research Institute, 7pm Lecture by Dr Oliver Johnson ‘Physical Fairytale: Finland's Jukola Relay’ Oli Johnson’s lecture considers the Jukola relay, and the sport of orienteering more broadly, as a visual and physical representation of traditional Nordic cultural values. How does the Jukola Relay engage with Kivi’s description of the civilising power of nature, and can the cartographic and competitive visualisation of the wilderness provide a modern substitute for this experience? You may also be interested in Colin Roth’s article, ‘Carl Nielsen’s Cultural Self-Education: his early engagement with fine art and ideas, and the path towards Hymnus Amoris ’, published in Carl Nielsen Studies 5 by the Royal Library, Copenhagen, in October 2012, which demonstrates the link, through Georg Brandes, between Nielsen’s and Kierkegaard’s aesthetics. The dynamic interaction between Danish and French creative artists during the ‘long nineteenth century’ forms the second, neo-Platonic and neo-classical, strand in ‘Romanticism’s Double Helix’, now the basis for a developing research project in the Centre for Nordic Studies in collaboration with White Rose partners. Friday 1 March, St Mark's Church, Broomhill, 1pm Organ recital Andrew Linn Scandinavia Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Intrada, op. 111a Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, op. 65 Oskar Lindberg (1887-1955) Gammal Fäbodpsalm från Dalarna via England Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Sonata 3 in A, op. 65 1. Con moto maestoso 2. Andante tranquillo Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Prelude on Rhosymedre Noel Rawsthorne (b. 1929) Hornpipe Humoresque Percy Whitlock (1903-1946) Toccata from Plymouth Suite to America Francis Linley (1771-1800) Voluntary Charles Zeuner (1795-1857) Fuga Joe Utterback Were you There? Norwegian America Knut Nystedt (b.1915) Bryllupsmarsj In the year 1825 the population of Norway was and could boast of a distinctive and urbane city just over one million. In the same year a sailing culture. The concert opens with a piece which boat called the Restauration left the port of reflects this metropolitan culture, the Intrada Stavanger with 52 religious dissenters on board written by Sibelius for the visit to Helsinki by the bound for a new life in America. Three months King and Queen of Sweden in 1925, just a short later they arrived in New York in the company of time after Finnish independence. It is a very an extra passenger, born during the long Atlantic solemn work, interspersed by flashes of colour, crossing. This was the first of thousands of such as if the young nation is flexing its muscles in the sailings from the ports of Scandinavia, Atlantic face of an earlier colonial power. Edvard Grieg crossings which would continue for a century, by was Norway’s greatest cultural export in the which time one million Norwegians had departed nineteenth century, although he made his home, in search of a new life. Some didn’t survive the Troldhaugen (Troll Hill), outside Bergen and journey. For others the challenge of establishing developed a musical style suffused with a new life was too great. Others prospered and Norwegian folk idioms. Wedding Day at news of their prosperity fuelled the ambition of Troldhaugen was originally one of his Lyric Pieces those back at home in the valleys and the fjords, for piano and is a fine example of the National dreaming of a better life. Some returned, but for Romantic propensity for bringing traditional forms many it was a one-way ticket away from family into the bourgeois salon. The ‘other’ Scandinavia and the familiar and into the unknown. Every beyond the bourgeois salon, the harsh emigrant had a different story, a personal drama. Scandinavia from which so many were fleeing is hard to recapture in so-called ‘art’ music, but At Sheffield University, hosted by the Centre for there is something of it in the traditional melody Nordic Studies and the School of English, there is heard by Oskar Lindberg in 1936 and rendered currently a project which is reconstructing this with striking simplicity as the Gammal extraordinary journey using Virtual World Fäbodpsalm från Dalarna . technology. The Ola Nordmann Goes West project brings to life the journey from rural Norway in the Migration has always characterised the life of 1880s down to the coast at the port of Bergen. It artists in search of new professional follows ‘Ola’ as he travels, like so many hundreds opportunities and new sources of inspiration. The of thousands, across the North Sea to Hull and German composer, Felix Mendelssohn, made ten then by train to Liverpool. By the 1880s the visits to Britain during his lifetime. He met Queen Scandinavian Church in Liverpool was dealing Victoria, a great admirer of his music, and he with 50,000 emigrants per year, many of whom found inspiration in the landscape of Scotland, would end up, like the character in our virtual most famously realised in his Hebrides Overture. world, in New York. The serious point of creating In 1844 the London publishers Coventry and the virtual world is to find out whether this sort of Hollier commissioned a set of organ voluntaries technology allows us to bring historical from Mendelssohn, and these were subsequently information and those with an interest in that grouped by key to form sonatas.