The board of DR KoncertKoret has the following reasons for appointing Marianne G. Nielsen as this year's recipient of the Danish Friends of DR KoncertKoret's award, 2017:
Marianne G. Nielsen, 1st soprano in KoncertKoret, is a well-liked, experienced, professional and competent singer and colleague.
Marianne has sung in DR for many years and on the sidelines she continues to enrich her audience with great solo performances. Marianne has made a name for herself with her insight and interpretations of the Hildegard von Bingen repertoire, and she is a frequent soloist in major works such as Brahms Requiem with the Academic Choir and Orchestra.
We find it remarkable that Marianne, despite some serious health challenges last year, managed to return to her regular place in the Concert Choir in her usual stable style. This stability led to an invitation to assist the VocalEnsemble when they performed Handel's Messiah with Fabio Luisi in 2016.
Marianne G. Nielsen is, as mentioned, a very well-liked colleague, and she is also one of the singers who likes to emphasise how much she enjoys working in DR KoncertKoret. Among other things, she has taken on the (often less attractive) job of being responsible for guidelines for concert attire among the members of the Concert Choir. Unlike the men's almost uniform dress code of dress and tails, the requirements for women's concert attire are more “multifaceted”. And with 30-40 female singers, each with their own style, there are more than enough questions to answer and guidelines to keep track of. Marianne manages this with authority, brilliance and her lovely, infectious smile.
We congratulate Marianne on her well-deserved scholarship.
Until shortly before the AGM, it was doubtful whether Marianne G. Nielsen's video thanksgiving speech and song would make it from Italy to the participants in the general meeting. That's why Emil Lykke, member of the board of the Friends and chairman of the Vocal Ensemble's singers, had promised to make sure that there would be a vocal flavour to the general meeting in any case. And even though the video clips arrived, the assembly was not cheated of Emil Lykke's tenor voice. Accompanied on guitar by Christian Odd, he sang his namesake Emil Reesen's well-known ”Bordets Glæder” from Farinelli, Benjamino Gigli's well-known brilliant number “Non ti scordar di me” by Ernesto de Curtis, and as an encore, they ended very much in keeping with the day's general meeting by singing and playing Otto Leisner and Salve d'Esposito's song about friends, “Det skønneste på jord” (org. ital. “Anema e core”)