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Stunning Easter experience
Philharmonic Choir in the leading role
Odense Symphony Orchestra / J.S. Bach: St John’s Passion
”Und neigte das Haupt und verschied”.
This is the text of the Gospel of St John in which Jesus gives up his spirit on the Cross.
Here the conductor Stephen Layton bent his head, and stood in more than one and a half minutes silence devotional on the podium. There was never...
Think of Baltic choral music and you probably think of something by Arvo Pärt. This new CD leaves him aside, and offers works from all three Baltic states: the 29-minute Missa Rigensis and Laudibus in sanctis by Ugis Praulins, and A cycle of Fricis Barda poems by Maija Einfelde (both Latvians), Benedictio by Estonian Urmask Sisask, and Angelis suis Deus and Pater noster by Lithuanian Vytautas...
Early this year when the Philadelphia choir the Crossing unveiled great music by the little-known young Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds, you had to wonder what other riches were out there. One answer is in this disc of unaccompanied choral works, all by living composers from Baltic countries in the last 20 years. They treat the medium with the kind of range and complexity one associates more...
Door de bekendheid van hun koormuziek kan de indruk bestaan dat boven de Noordzee alleen Pärt en Rautavaara dergelijk repertoire hebben gemaakt. Verbreed nu uw horizon met deze fraaie selectie van Baltische koorwerken die de dirigent Stephen Layton en het jeugdige maar ronduit professioneel klinkende koor van Trinity College uit Cambridge heeft opgenomen. Einfelde, Miškinis, Prauliòš en Sisask:...
A fascinating anthology of contemporary a capella vocal works from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the music is mercifully free of the saccharine blandness that afflicts some modern choral composition, while remaining accessible and vividly communicative. The birth dates of the composers on this disc range from 1939 to 1957. All developed up under Soviet influence, isolated from the more avant-...
In a sense this release brings my experience to date of Messiah on CD full circle. The very first Messiah that I acquired was a live recording, also from St. John’s Smith Square and captured by Hyperion. That was the 1985 version by The Sixteen and Harry Christophers (now on Hyperion’s Dyad label, which I still regard highly. Since then several other CD versions of Handel’s great masterpiece have...