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Herbert Howells (1892-1983) perfectly understood the way that liturgical music could stir the spirits. His two Services for Gloucester and St Paul’s Cathedrals, magnificently exploit ecclesiastical acoustics while bringing to the canticle texts a fluid lyrical gift, an imaginative harmonic spectrum and a sense of occasion. The disc takes ts title from the sparer, introspective Requiem, to which,...
I may not always like the music, but never has a recording of choral music conducted by Stephen Layton failed to move me. This one is no exception, and in this particular case, the music happens to be admirable. The choral works of Herbert Howells (1892-1983), including his Requiem, are well represented in the recording catalogues and very well served. But even though the market may be saturated...
I was completely befuddled by the first words on the booklet cover: 'Half Monk' and 'Half Rascal'. Initially I thought of them as a couple of Scandinavian participants in the recording, and it was only when reading Claus Johansen (probably also Scandinavian) on the music itself that I came across Poulenc's remark that 'A critic has said that there are both a monk and a street urchin in me. That...
Layton and the DNVE follow Praulins with Poulenc
The Danish National Vocal Ensemble face some pretty stiff competition with this disc of unaccompanied Poulenc but they do not just hold their own; they sweep a lot of it aside. Under Stephen Layton's perceptive and often inspired direction, they capture the essential dichotomy of Poulenc's writing as encapsulated in the title of the disc, a...
“A critic said that there is both a monk and a street urchin in me. That is an accurate description of my personality”. Poulenc was the first to admit the contradictions inherent in his music and character. A devout Catholic, he was openly gay, and his music can miraculously reconcile the deeply personal with the cheekily flippant. Close your ears to Poulenc and you’re missing out on some of the...
No one is pretending Poulenc's melodies and instrumental music are without their performing problems. But, rather curiously, he left many of his most fearsome challenges for his choral music: in phrasing, balance, articulation, register and, above all, tuning. For every piece that sits comfortably in a model armchair, there's another that stuns with chromatic leaps and bounds- and often the two...