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Pärt: Passio (Concert Review - The Financial Times, 2001)
Passions abound at Easter - chiefly, but not exclusively, Bach's, after the gospel accounts. On Sunday I heard Bach's St Matthew in the Barbican Hall, from Paul McCreesh's Gabrieli Consort and Players; a few days earlier, I'd heard Arvo Part's austere 1982 Passio after St John, performed by the Hilliard Ensemble, Stephen Layton and his Holst Singers, at St John's, Smith Square. Both performances w
Britten: Sacred and Profane (CD Review - The Evening Standard, 2001)
After hearing their latest CD of choral works by Britten, nothing will dissuade me from the conclusion that Polyphony under Stephen Layton is the best chamber choir in the country. Listen to the pinpoint articulation in I mon waxe wood from the collection Sacred and Profane Op91. The high sopranos are lithe, strong and young. They rattle out the semiquavers even at altitude with precision and clar
Various: Ikon, Vol. 1 (CD Review - Gramophone Magazine, 1997)
The most interesting discovery to be made on this anthology is Sviridov's choral music, both sacred (though disguised as incidental music for a play under the Soviet regime) and profane (a lovely Blok cycle). A Russian nineteenth-century ancestry is audible in his work, and he is clearly following in the footsteps of Rachmaninov, with a splendid sureness of technique. James Bowman's voice (unexpec
Various: Ikon, Vol. 1 (CD Review - Soundscape Australia, 1997)
The timbral and textural palette of Russian choral sound is clearly evident to Layton and the ensemble with Tchaikovsky’s setting of Blessed are they whom Thou hast chosen, the octave doublings of melodic passages and eight-part writing sustained with clarity and a lovely feeling for phrase. Of greatest interest, however, is Knut Nystedt's stunningly simple Immortal Bach … Under Stephen Layton’s d