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Bruckner lovers will be familiar with his motets, but may not know his glorious Mass No 2, which shares their daring modulations and sensual chromatic harmonies. Stephen Layton and Polyphony really understand this music and perform here with a calm confidence that can be lacking in others recordings of Bruckner's often-perilous choral writing. As a bonus, the spacious acoustic of Ely Cathedral...
This recording done in the resonant acoustic of Ely Cathedral has much to recommend it. Polyphony is one of the finest ensembles of its type, now about 20 years on the scene, and Stephen Layton needs no introduction to choral aficionados. There are a number of recordings of this mass on the market, as it is unusual in that it alone of Bruckner's canonical three uses only wind instruments as...
With its refracted echoes of Palestrina, Bruckner's E minor Mass for choir and wind band stands as a sublime anachronism in a worldly, sceptical age. Recorded in the sumptuous acoustics of Ely Cathedral, Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia catch the music's starkness, exaltation and mysticism as movingly as I have heard. This is a searching performance, with soft singing of awed intensity, but...
Hyperion is on a roll. Its superb new CD of Anton Bruckner's choral music, with the chorus Polyphony under the direction of Stephen Layton, includes both a mass, the second in E minor, and seven of the composer's motets. Here there's no overt attempt to say which form of music is superior, though again the motets for unaccompanied choir do seem to win out.
Bruckner scored the E-minor Mass for...
I’ve had nothing but good things to say about Polyphony in works by Rutter, Whitacre, and maybe a few others. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the excellence of this program. Bruckner, of course, is grandly symphonic even when he’s not writing symphonies; and his motets and masses are no exception. Polyphony, you’ll recall, is a co-ed British chamber choir, with accents on both “British” (clarity...
