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NCC immediately responsive to Stephen Layton’s command of detail and dramatic design
Stephen Layton is one of those conductors who achieves much by doing little, or so it seemed here. In this demanding programme it was revealing that the choir’s relaxed confidence was not affected by some unwelcome intrusions of sound from without and within the hall. For a 17 voice group to sing James Macmillan’...
I had never been to Venice before this summer, and the relentless beauty of the place overwhelmed me. This new CD, too, is relentlessly beautiful: just as one palazzo follows another on the Grand Canal, so here one polished gem succeeds another in performances of an intensity that raises the hair on the nape of the neck. I haven't heard a choral recording to beat it in years.
Stephen Layton and...
This collection, a sequel to Polyphony’s all-Pärt CD for Hyperion, brings together choral music composed from 1996 to 2002. The period marked a widening of the range of languages Pärt set, and also a warming of his tonal colouring, compared with the cooler, sparer sound-world of his classic Latin settings, such as the St John Passion.
Several of the works were British ecclesiastical commissions...
I anticipate a considerable success for this disc. It brings together eight quite recent works by Pärt, and in doing so calls attention to the considerable variety to be found in them, to which Meurig Bowen’s informed notes provide an excellent guide. Dopo la vittoria brings the first surprise: it’s a setting of a text in Italian (though admittedly, translated from the Russian of the Dictionary...
Triodion is the longest of eight works on this disc, and comprises three odes leading to a simple coda. Everything is pared down to the minimum here and the music always seems to have time to linger. Only the most pure and precise of choral groups can raise Arvo Part’s work to its optimum level of expression. Polyphony and its conductor Stephen Layton make ideal interpreters. This their second...
With six world premiere recordings to its credit, this disc would immediately attract attention even if the performances were not of the exceptional quality that they are here. Harmonic simplicity and the clear delivery of words are Part’s concerns in these works, united to haunting effect in the album’s solemn title track, Triodion. Stephen Layton and Polyphony clearly captured the Estonian...