Brahms (for female choir) by Kvindelige Studenters Sangforening

Johannes Brahms

Kvindelige Studenters Sangforening

Brahms (for female choir)

Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020180557
Catnr: LWC 1054
Release date: 11 February 2014
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020180557

Catalogue number
LWC 1054

Release date
11 February 2014

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

This CD is part of the LAWO Classics collection of new recordings of Brahms. Kvindelige Studenters Sangforening (the Women’s Choral Society of the University of Oslo) has had the pleasure of collaborating with a group of very accomplished female musicians. Some have accompanied the choir in the past; with others, it is a first-time collaboration.

Works for female choir by Brahms are not often performed in a Norwegian context, and this CD can help perhaps to put the repertoire on the map here at home. In addition, this recording can be a contribution to presenting Brahms’s vocal music in a more Scandinavian timbre. This is the choir’s second recording for LAWO Classics − the first, “Arme jord ha jolefred” (2009), was picked as the Christmas CD of the year by a number of Norwegian newspapers.

Artist(s)

Kvindelige Studenters Sangforening

The Women’s Choral Society of the University of Oslo (Kvindelige Studenters Sangforening — KSS) was founded in 1895 and is the official female choir of the University of Oslo. As the world’s oldest academic choir for women, it can look back on 128 years and the creation of traditions that are still alive today. The choir has played an important role for the university and for the feminist movement, whilst at the same time securing its place in music history through its musical accomplishments and premiere performances of works for female choir. KSS is an organisation with lofty ambitions and a high level of achievement. In 2006 the choir was awarded First Prize for female choirs at the Musica Mundi International...

The Women’s Choral Society of the University of Oslo (Kvindelige Studenters Sangforening — KSS) was founded in 1895 and is the official female choir of the University of Oslo. As the world’s oldest academic choir for women, it can look back on 128 years and the creation of traditions that are still alive today. The choir has played an important role for the university and for the feminist movement, whilst at the same time securing its place in music history through its musical accomplishments and premiere performances of works for female choir.
KSS is an organisation with lofty ambitions and a high level of achievement. In 2006 the choir was awarded First Prize for female choirs at the Musica Mundi International Competition in Riva del Garda, Italy. In 2015 and 2019 the choir participated in the European Choir Games and Grand Prix of Nations in Magdeburg and Gothenburg, respectively, and emerged victorious both times in the category “Folklore” and in “Open Competition”. These accomplishments have led to KSS’s ranking since 2015 as the world’s best female choir by the music organisation Interkultur, in addition to a third place in “Folklore” and a 21st place independent of class (as of 2023). During the Tolosa Choral Contest in Basque Country, Spain in 2017, KSS achieved a second place in the category “Folklore”, and in the spring of 2019 the choir won a third place in the prestigious Fleischmann International Trophy Competition in Cork, Ireland.
Magnificat is the choir’s sixth release on the LAWO Classics label, all under the direction of conductor Marit Tøndel Bodsberg Weyde. The Christmas album Arme jord ha jolefred (LWC1009) came first in 2009, and the associated music video Folkefrelsar won a second place in the European Choral Video Awards in 2012. Brahms (LWC1054), a selection of Johannes Brahms’s compositions for female choir, was released in 2013, followed by Kom regn (LWC1134), a collection of Norwegian contemporary music, in 2017, and, one year later, Som den gylne sol frembryter (LWC1144), featuring Norwegian National Romantic music and traditional folk music. The choir’s second Christmas album, Stille som sne (LWC1209), was released in 2020 to good reviews, including a rating ‘6’ (of 6) by ‘NRK Klassisk’ (The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s classical music station). “Wow, this is a true gem! Stille som sne is without a doubt this year’s best Christmas album.” (Eystein Sandvik, 30 November 2020)

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Composer(s)

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature.

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