The Splendor of Grace

This program brings together three works from different centuries that meditate on loss, compassion, and the possibility of transformation through suffering.

Bach’s Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4 anchors the program with a Lutheran chorale cantata that confronts death directly, framing it as something ultimately overcome through faith and communal proclamation. Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs, op. 47, though lighter in texture and more intimate in scale, continue this reflection by pairing natural imagery with human emotion—beauty and fragility existing side by side, and joy never fully separated from transience.

David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion closes the program by reimagining a familiar story of suffering through the structural lens of the Passion. Like a classic Dickens novel, Lang gives a voice to a marginalized and impoverished character, who would otherwise be swallowed by the vastness of industrialization, and invites the audience into a compassionate contemplation of vulnerability, witness, and shared humanity.

Across all three works, listeners will encounter recurring themes of mortality, innocence, and redemption, shaped by each composer’s response to their cultural and spiritual moment. Together, the pieces trace a powerful arc from communal belief, to personal reflection, to empathetic witness, revealing how music across centuries continues to grapple with the same fundamental human questions.