CCMusic.com

Kent Nagano and Jan Vogler, the American in Germany and the German in the United States, perpetually crossing the Atlantic and calling both continents home, embody and live this once so powerful transatlantic ideal in every respect. For they are bound by much more than a deep artistic friendship and their collaborative work. They share-even more comprehensively-a worldview and understanding of life based on the Western, humanistic canon of values that Europeans once carried across the Atlantic to their new world...

"It was precisely this transatlantic idea that drove me when Jan and I developed this project a few years ago," says Kent Nagano. "Hamburg was the link to the New World not just for the people of Hamburg, but for millions of Europeans." This was to be reflected in a musical work capable of carrying this idea into the future. For good reason: for years, the continents have seemingly been drifting apart.

The world-renowned conductor does not hide his concern about this development. "It was also important to me to anchor the transatlantic idea in the next generation through children's and youth choirs on both sides of the ocean, who could work together and spend time with each other."

The result is the oratorio "An einem klaren Tag - On a Clear Day" for cello, choir, and orchestra.

The participants in the project underscore the thematic concern: the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, texts by the well-known German poet Ulla Hahn set to music by the young American composer Sean Shepherd, who made a name for himself in the United States at a very early age, various youth choirs from Germany and New York, along with the German star cellist Jan Vogler and Nagano as the American conductor of the Hamburg State Opera, who grew up where America is farthest from Europe-in a fishing village on the American West Coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles

... (Excerpts from booklet notes by Inge Kloepfer)