Die vier Tageszeiten

A concert featuring Hans-Joachim Hessler (piano/organ):

With a highly diverse musical program, organist Dr. Hans-Joachim Hessler invites the audience on a journey to India and to a concert celebrating the four times of day:

The concert centers on Indian ragas combined with works of European classical music. Indian ragas are typically associated with specific times of day. Hans-Joachim Hessler, a multi-stylistic virtuoso, has drawn inspiration from these Indian melodic lines and combines them with European medieval music, specifically chorales that also allude to the four times of day: morning, noon, evening, and night.

Another commonality lies in tonality, as both classical Indian music and the Gregorian chant of the European Middle Ages draw on the scales of ancient Greece. Each program will be preceded by compositions from the classical-romantic period of European music. The audience can thus look forward to, among other pieces, Edvard Grieg’s “Morning Mood” and Claude Debussy’s “Claire de Lune,” which is associated with an Indian night raga.