The Little Match Girl is among the most famous as well as saddest fairy tales from the pen of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). Over the course of more than one-and-a-half centuries this fable has inspired the imagination of many artists, including the American composer David Lang. In his work The Little Match Girl Passion, which was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in music, Lang contrasts the sufferings of this poor little girl with the sufferings of Jesus, inspired by Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The score also requires the a-capella singers to operate a variety of percussive instruments. On this album entitled “Again and Again” the Company of Music with choir master Johannes Hiemetsberger also present other Christmas-related choir songs like First Snow by Bo Holten, John Tavener’s The Lamb, Again by David Lang and Lullay, My Liking by Gustav Holst.

If one takes the Company of Music at its word, it is a “musical society.” What a utopia it is in our society for people to raise their voices for music the way the Company of Music does: centuries, different family and ethnic backgrounds, space and time dissolve the moment sound is produced. It is not a utopia; the Company of Music is a magical reality. Austria’s only professional vocal ensemble with its own cycle in the Vienna Konzerthaus has long sounded this dimension of reality. The vocal collective’s scope ranges from the 15th century to Baroque milestones all the way to classics of the modern era, ending in the manifold present, right where everything is beginning all over again. There are no limits, not even in the complicity with other branches of art such as performance art, literature and film. It is simply about the eternal adventure of the concert event. The uncompromising willingness to take risks and the urgency of consummate vocal music performance lend the Company of Music their regular place, which is best right under listeners’ skin, in many of the world’s concert halls and well-known festivals.