As part of Voices of Ascension’s Choral Visionaries series, we welcome guest conductor Kathy Saltzman Romey, Artistic Director of the Minnesota Chorale and long-time Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota. A frequent collaborator with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, and a long-time artistic partner of Helmuth Rilling, Romey brings international depth and authority to this searching meditation on mortality.
At the heart of this program stands Hugo Distler’s rarely-heard Dance of Death (Totentanz), presented in a semi-theatrical staging with NAME as narrator. In this stark and expressionistic work, Death summons figures from every walk of life to account for themselves, confronting each with the limits of power, status, and certainty. Composed in 1934 and later censored under the Nazi regime, Dance of Death is seldom performed today, yet it remains a deeply respected work of singular dramatic force, a searing and uncompromising interrogation of what makes a life worth living.
Herbert Howells’s Requiem brings the evening to a radiant conclusion. Its long, arching lines and glowing harmonies create a world of inward movement and restrained intensity. Rather than dramatic lament, Howells offers music of profound consolation, serene yet deeply felt, carrying the listener toward quiet transcendence.
Johannes Brahms’ Warum? (“Why?”) frames the evening’s searching spirit, while Knut Nystedt’s luminous Immortal Bach offers a moment of suspended reflection, completing a journey from questioning to reckoning to repose.
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Earlier Event: December 20
J. S. Bach: Christmas Oratorio (Cantatas 4–6)
Later Event: February 26
J. S. Bach: Mass in B Minor