Something sizzles between the stones. It is the city, there is life. But what makes the city the city? Is it the people or the buildings? That which is, or that which has been?

The city is a place of community, busy conviviality, music, tradition, inspiration, new smells, colors and flavors on every street corner, room for growth and development. The city can be your home, if you conquer your own place. But it can also be a center of loneliness, of isolation. Feeling alone in the crowd, unsafe in an impersonal, unnatural and artificial environment. A place of endless buzzing, buzzing, squeaking, a whirlwind of endlessly rushing metal.

Centuries of history, millions of people and advancing modernity jostle for the limited space. In Voices of the City, the singers of the Dutch Student Chamber Choir of 2025 make their way through the history of the city to find a place in modern urban life.

In a varied program of modern and old choral music, 32 participants sing about the problems that city residents have faced for centuries, such as displacement, isolation, destruction and overstimulation. On the other hand, we also sing about the festiveness, solidarity and diversity of the metropolis. After all, the city is a world of contradictions.

Lodewijk van der Ree about the program:

Schütz introduces our city, we sing passionately around the audience. With Brahms we sing how proud and happy we are to be part of this community. But in part 2 of Brahms there is already a warning about how cities can collapse if they are not managed properly, something that returns later in the program. From this traditional opening we zoom in on a busy street (Gudmundsen-Holmgreen). It soon becomes clear that this is a much more modern city than what we have been singing about so far. In the hustle and bustle of the modern city, problems also exist, both on a personal level (loneliness in the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby) and on a much larger scale (gentrification in Celia Swart’s play). These more negative elements lead to the darkest moment in the program, Ton de Leeuw’s Élégie. The city is no longer safe, destroyed by war. But De Leeuw’s piece ends positively, after the complex polyphony we find each other again in a unison song of praise. From there we can continue with two more pieces; small stories and street scenes in the big city (Penny Lane) and garish neon lights and advertisements in Mayke Nas’ piece. For me, the latter is too humorous and lightly toned to approach it very negatively, I see it mainly as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the modern world. Obviously you have to filter to avoid going crazy, but that’s something most people are capable of doing. It is clear that you should not immerse yourself in these kinds of shouty slogans for too long. After a day in the busy city it is nice to go back to your own nest with Caroline Shaw.

Program

Heinrich Schütz – Der 122. Psalm SWV 26

Johannes Brahms – Fest- und Gedenksprüche op. 109

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen – Tre Stadier nr. 1: I gaderne

John Lennon & Paul McCartney – Eleanor Rigby (arr. Paul Hart)

Celia Swart – Doorstromingen (commissioned by NSK)

Ton de Leeuw – Élégie pour les villes detruites

John Lennon & Paul McCartney – Penny Lane (arr. Bob Chilcott)

Mayke Nas – Filter or Flip!

Caroline Shaw – And the swallow (Psalm 84)