Pro Coro Canada is hoping to create a new holiday tradition with its fourth annual presentation of composer David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion.
The composer, strongly influenced by Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, based his 35-minute oratorio on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale Little Match Girl.
“It’s a very quiet, very reflective meditative piece of music. It’s a very nice counterweight to the frenzy of Christmas. We just finished Messiah at the Winspear and it was quite big. This is a moment of stillness at Christmas and people appreciate it,” said artistic director Michael Zaugg.
Andersen’s Little Match Girl is a startling brutal tale of an abusive father who sends his young daughter to sell matches on New Year’s Day, but passersby ignore her.
Unable to return home without money, she warms herself by lighting matches and is comforted by memories of her grandmother’s warm home on Christmas Day.
She is found dead the next morning still holding the burnt matches and wearing an angelic smile.
Little Match Girl Passion is scored for only four voices and a few percussion pieces played by the singers. The result is a sound more in common with Renaissance sacred music or English madrigals.
“Lang uses spare instrumentation. It’s his style.”
Performing this compelling passion are Jolaine Kerley, Adrienne Sitko, Caleb Nelson and St. Albert’s Michael Kurschat.
“The element of bringing in moments of quiet reflection set the tone for Christmas. It’s a heartbreaking story, but the performers are exceptional singers and they also play the instruments. It’s a difficult piece to sustain and it’s a vocal feat.”
Lang premiered the oratorio at Carnegie Hall in 2007. A year later he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Tim Page, a Pulitzer juror said, “With all due respect to the hundreds of distinguished pieces I’ve listened to as a Pulitzer juror, I don’t think I’ve ever been so moved by a new, and largely unheralded composition as I was by David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion, which is unlike any music I know.”
Little Match Girl Passion is performed Sunday, Dec. 18 in the darkened candlelit All Saints Cathedral.
Preview
Little Match Girl Passion<br />Pro Coro Quartet<br />Sunday, Dec. 18 at 7 p.m.<br />All Saints Cathedral<br />10035 – 103 St.<br />Tickets: $25 at door or by calling 780-428-1414
