Monteverdi-Chor Hamburg

Originally founded over 60 years ago, the Monteverdi-Chor Hamburg is one of Germany’s most renowned choirs, and is an advertisement for its native city and its university, where the choir first saw the light of day. The choir’s wide-ranging repertoire covers music from the Renaissance to the present day, with a cappella works as one of the main emphases from the outset. The Monteverdi-Chor appears tonight in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall with one of Felix Mendelssohn’s best-known compositions, his powerful oratorio setting the story of the prophet Elijah. Mendelssohn spent no fewer than ten years working on the score with its »dense, heavy and full-sounding choruses«. »Elijah« had its first performance in Birmingham, England, in 1846, and shortly after that in New York; it enjoys great popularity in Britain and America to this day.