Erik Højsgaard has shaped Danish musical life for decades. As a composer, he has written works for both national and international ensembles and has been performed worldwide.  Now Athelas focuses on a composer who is among the most significant of his generation, when they present two of Erik Højsgaard's main works as well as a premiere of a completely new work commissioned by Athelas in a solo concert.

Please accept a sunset - Erik Højsgaard

The concert church

It's about poetry and love when the Copenhagen Opera Festival presents a newly written opera in 2024 as well. This year we are particularly happy to be on stage when Mahogany Opera and Copenhagen Opera Festival's new Rolf Hind opera 'Sky in a small cage' premieres in Copenhagen, then travels to London. You shouldn't miss it.

EPSG:4326

Sky in a Small Cage – Cph. Opera Festival

The Royal Danish Academy of Music

In 2024, KLANG celebrates a fantastic 15-year anniversary. On this occasion, we have entered into a collaboration with our long-term collaborator (and the organization from which Klang grew) Athelas Sinfonietta and the new initiative Second Sound (an organization focused on promoting re-performances of newly written works) to create a tour-de -force programme, which consists exclusively of works which, over time, have been commissioned for or premiered by Athelas at Klang. Expect a true celebration of the wildness and vulnerability that the composers (and musicians) have shown over the past 15 years.

KLANG/ATHELAS – anniversary concert

Musikhuset Copenhagen

In the concert series 'Danish Dialogues', ATHELAS commissions a new work from a Danish composer, who at the same time selects a work by another composer that has had a special meaning for them. This time it applies to Morten Ladehoff, who has written 5TÜCKW3RK for the occasion – a work that plays with the idea of ​​being a piece of music in pieces. Ladehoff himself describes the work as a kind of autonomous sound factory, where musical processes are initiated but not completed, and where contours of delicate sonorous constructions arise, are played forwards and backwards, accelerated, cut up and interwoven criss-cross. In the middle of this unpredictable, angular and noisy universe is a core of poetic sensibility.

5TÜCKW3RK (Ladehoff uropf.)

SPOT Festival and the Danish Composers Association launch a new platform SPOT FLUX, which presents a broad palette of contemporary orchestral works.

ATHELAS on SPOT

Musikhuset Aarhus

Danish-French composer Loïc Destremau explores the theme of Time through instrumental, installation and multimedia-based music. From an imaginary journey through time to a spatial expression of the passage of time, the works create a reflection on music's connection to our shared and individual experience of time.

Loïc Destremau (Debut concert)

 ATHELAS has the great honor of inviting to a concert with the recipient of the Léonie Sonnings Musikpris 2024, the French-Swiss flautist Emmanuel Pahud. The concert on March 10 in Den Sorte Diamant is not only the first award recipient gives in connection with the award reception, but also the only one in concert in Copenhagen. We are proud to have conductor Anu Tali on stage at this fireworks display of a concert.

Emmanuel Pahud, Sonnings Music Prize 2024

The Royal Library

On Friday 24 November, ATHELAS presents the second concert in the series European trendsetters, where Danish audiences are introduced to masterpieces from a number of the composers who have defined the European scenes for the last hundred years. This time it will be an intense meeting with Hungarian/Austrian György Ligeti and Finnish Kaija Saariaho at a sonorous concert in Musikhuset.

György Ligeti & Kaija Saariaho

A THELAS is relaunching the popular concert format Brand New Tuesdays, where the ensemble's musicians perform works written for smaller constellations over three evenings in a season. The small crews allow ATHELAS' musicians to create a more intimate and informal space between the musicians and the audience and at the same time unfold themselves in an extra equilibristic way on their instruments. Initially, it applies to the wind quintet, which demonstrates the many facets of the wind through a very varied and versatile program.

Brand New Tuesdays

As part of the family festival Live ART for Children, ATHELAS, in collaboration with the performance art organizers Live Art Denmark and theater Black/White, kicks off the autumn holidays with a total of four concerts spread over two days. In the two works that ATHELAS performs at the festival: Musique de tables (1985), which the Belgian composer and filmmaker Thierry de Mey is behind, and Black Box Music (2012) by Danish Simon Steen Andersen, hands are the focal point.

Black Box Music

Sort/Hvid

In the concert series Danske dialoger, ATHELAS commissions a new work from a Danish composer, who at the same time selects a work by another composer that has had a special meaning for them. This time it applies to Peter Bruun and his new work But always as it should be , which is performed in collaboration with the cellist Carl-Oscar Østerlind. Bruun has chosen Per Nørgård's Night-Symphonies, Day Breaks (1992). Hear why when Peter Bruun himself presents the new work as part of the concert and justifies the choice of Nørgård.

Athelas Sinfonietta

Dec 7, 2024

Hans Abrahamsen, Schnee

Jan 28, 2025

Reich/Richter & Philip Glass

Oct 5, 2024

Please accept a sunset - Erik Højsgaard

Aug 25, 2024

Sky in a Small Cage – Cph. Opera Festival

Athelas Sinfonietta