Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil / Jermihov, Gloriae Dei Cantores
Gloriae Dei Cantores
SACD
$31.99Mar 03, 2017
Named All-Time Best Recording of the All-Night Vigil by BBC Music Magazine!
Gloriae Dei Cantores releases All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, conducted by Peter Jermihov (internationally recognized specialist in Russian and Orthodox Liturgical music). Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil is made up of texts taken from the Russian Orthodox All-night vigil ceremony. Critics praised the work as Rachmaninoff’s finest achievement and “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church.” It was also one of the composer’s favorite compositions, and the fifth movement was sung at his funeral. Gloriae Dei Cantores is joined by members of the St. Romanos Cappella, The Patriarch Tikhon Choir, and The Washington Master Chorale. Protodeacon under the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Vadim Gan, sings the clergy exclamations as well as Dmitry Ivanchenko. Soloists, Dmitry Ivanchenko and Mariya Berezovska, from the National Opera of Ukraine in Kiev, join the choir of 77 singers for this landmark collaboration and recording.
REVIEWS:
This new recording has the essential sound of the Russian choirs, with their bass-centered sonority, and tempos which allow the music to unfold in the measured pace of a devotional service. Better yet, the text-based spiritual approach to the music...stirs at least as deeply as [the] ...Russian recordings. While referring to the texts, you will have the pleasure of seeing the gorgeously illustrated booklet, with a background on each hymn and photographs of Russian churches, countryside and icons. The result is one of the very finest recordings this work has ever received.
--Ronald E. Grames, Fanfare
A landmark recording, one that is destined to become the new standard for this work. And if you don't know the Rachmaninoff "All-Night Vigil " yet, THIS is the recording you should get to begin your acquaintance. You will have to wait a long time before something better comes along!"
-- Vladimir Morosan, Musica Russica
We are invited to lift our spirits through a deeply inspired performance of Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil. This performance rings with devotional majesty . . . The stunning surround sound comes to us through the combined efforts of Keith O. Johnson and Sean Royce Martin.
-- Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition
"Recording of the Month... A splendid achievement."
-- MusicWeb International
"An exemplary performance... a superlative recording... beyond glorious."
The Essential Gregorian Chant Collection / Gloriae Dei Cantores
Gloriae Dei Cantores
CD
$42.99Jul 29, 2016
This new release is a collection of ethereal and passionate Gregorian chants performed by Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola. The ensemble is made up of women and men who live in the Benedictine tradition and dedicate themselves to the study and performance of Gregorian chant. The three disc set includes The Chants of Mary, The Chants of Angels, and The Chants of the Holy Spirit. Each album is accompanied by full-color art booklets which give full texts and informative historical context to each chant.
"Three of the finest chant CDs have been released by Gloriae Dei Cantores. Be transported to a timeless place of eternal beauty." —Kansas City Star Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola has been praised by the New York Times for "expert renditions of Gregorian Chant" and "excellence of interpretation" by Fanfare Magazine. Their daily singing of Gregorian chant brings this vibrant and living form of sung prayer to life in these three stunning SACD's. These ancient chants still speak volumes today in this essential collection by the Schola that sets the example time and again. . . Not even the most seasoned monastic group delivers it better than the Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola. —American Record Guide (About The Chants of Angels) "This is yet another superb production from a source that sets the example time and time again. Do delve into the clear, cool waters of Gregorian chant – and this is a perfect place to start." —Audiophile Audition (About The Chants of Mary)
The National Brass Ensemble with James Sommerville and Gail Williams, French Horn.
The National Brass Ensemble is comprised of twenty-six of the finest brass players in major orchestras across the US. “Gabrieli”, featuring the NBE, includes 15 pieces from the Italian composer’s highly influential Sacrae Symphoniae (1597), arranged for this ensemble by San Francisco Symphony trombonist Tim Higgins, and the debut of Music for Brass, a new work by celebrated film composer John Williams. The inspiration for this recording comes from a historic, Grammy Award-winning recording, The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli, featuring the legendary brass ensembles of the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras. It has been long admired as the definitive modern performance of Giovanni Gabrieli’s works.
Mozart: 45 Symphonies / Adam Fischer, Danish National Chamber Orchestra
Dacapo Classical
CD
$53.99Jan 28, 2014
MOZART Symphonies Nos. 1, 4–31, 33–36, 39–41. Symphonies, K 19a, 42a, 45a–b, 73l–n, 73q, 111b • Ádám Fischer, cond; Danish Natl CO • DACAPO 8.201201 (12 CDs: 716:42)
I mentioned in my review of a single disc from this series, which included symphonies Nos. 28–30 (Fanfare 34:4), that I didn’t think that Ádám Fischer’s performances captured “Mozart’s drama as well as they capture his elegance,” but added the caveat that it’s difficult to gauge an entire series of symphonies by one CD. Alas, in later reviewing the disc including symphonies Nos. 31, 33, and 34, I had the opposite feeling, that Fischer was making a “race to the finish line” and playing the symphonies too quickly. Now, as it so happened, I reviewed those two discs about two years apart, and so did not have the first still on hand to compare to the second, or to think about the differences in approach. But now I have the full set of 45 symphonies to review, and my feelings have changed. Now I am inclined to agree with Patrick Rucker, who gave a rave review to the single disc of symphonies Nos. 15–18 in Fanfare 31:1 (a disc reviewed, I believe, before I joined the magazine staff), stating that he was “grasping for superlatives.”
The difference? Listening to the entire series in chronological sequence. By doing so, I noted that, despite an overall theatrical approach to these symphonies (in the liner notes, Fischer admits that he tends to think of orchestral music “operatically,” i.e., finding a dramatic theme or thread in the music that he then tries to bring out), he does make distinctions between the earlier and the later symphonies. Reducing his approach to a few basics, he plays the earlier symphonies with equal drama and electricity but with far fewer changes in dynamics and fewer rubato touches. In addition, I was able to download the scores of four of the symphonies—two of the most famous late works (40 and 41) and two early symphonies (Nos. 5 and 15, chosen pretty much at random)—and although these are not up-to-date, verified, Urtext scores like the ones Fischer worked from, they do include dynamics markings. And, as any number of conductors of the past have mentioned, they do not tell you what to do between the forte here and the piano four or six bars later (or vice versa). You are expected to follow your own good taste in approaching them.
Perhaps another deciding factor for me was in hearing Philippe Herreweghe’s more dynamic performances of symphonies Nos. 39 and 41 and, believe it or not, Bruno Walter’s historic performances of symphonies Nos. 39–41. Despite Walter’s slower tempos (and richer string sound), he actually elicited much more nuance and detail from those symphonies than did Jaap ter Linden, whose set I gave a good review to and suggested at the time that it was a fine historically-informed set of the Mozart symphonies. But, to be honest, what really sold me on Fischer’s approach were his performances of the early, lesser-known, oft-neglected, and unnumbered symphonies. Each and every one of them sounded as if it was just bursting with excitement, yet not too much that it overpowered the music on the printed page.
Moreover, what struck me in the single disc of symphonies 31, 33 and 34 as too fast now, suddenly, made sense in context. And, for the several Toscanini-bashers out there, I found it almost comical to note that Fischer takes the Finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony at virtually the same tempo that they consider “too fast.” The difference, of course, is that musicians of the 1940s and 50s weren’t used to playing Mozart this swiftly, and so they tended to sound pressed, whereas Fischer’s Danish National Chamber Orchestra skips through the music deftly and nimbly, like snow rabbits dashing across the landscape. It’s the comfort level of the executants that makes the difference, then, not the “wrong” tempo.
A good example of Fischer’s approach is CD 3, where he presents no less that four symphonies in a row that are all in the key of D Major (K 73l, m, n, and q). It would have been very easy for him, and the orchestra, to simply slip into an all-purpose style for these works, which of course would make them sound pretty much the same, yet he continually varies his approach from work to work. I do, however, caution the listener to approach this set one CD at a time. That is what I did, listening on consecutive nights to only one CD per evening, and it worked out pretty well. You get a better feel for the magnitude of Fischer’s achievement that way, and you are being fairer to both him and the Danish orchestra, whose players helped prod him on to take chances with the music and do things differently from the norm. After all, this was a seven-year project for them. These symphonies did not just get all rehearsed and recorded within a year or two.
I should also point out the work that went into Symphony No. 15, one of the four I obtained scores of. In the notes, Fischer asserts that if this work had not been by Mozart, who wrote so many symphonies and so many of good quality, it would probably be a much better known work, possibly a repertoire staple. Just reading the score, the music does look promising but certainly not brilliant. The first movement, for instance, is in a quick 3/4 time, featuring a jagged melody with the usual wide-ranging melodic leaps. From the first bar, the dynamics marking is forte, which changes to piano at bar 13, then back to forte at bar 22, piano again at bar 25, forte on the first beat of bar 30 with a sudden fp on the second beat (a half note played by the oboes, trumpets, and first violins, while the second violins play 16ths and the violas, cellos, and basses play eighth notes). It’s all pretty cut-and-dry, you might say, and this is how most conductors play it. Fischer adds a little burst of extra volume at the top of bar 5, when the agitated strings play against long-held notes by oboes and trumpets, and there are all sorts of little gradations of sound in various places, including slight crescendos to emphasize the musical drama. More interestingly, none of this sounds particularly fussy; if you didn’t have the score in front of you, or if you hadn’t heard any number of flat-response historically-informed performances, you’d think that this is simply the way the music goes. Toscanini once said it isn’t the f here or the p there that’s difficult to gauge, but what to do in between. Sadly, Toscanini paid little attention to most of Mozart’s symphonies because, except for the last three, he found most of them boring: “Is always beautiful, but always the same!” In Fischer’s performances, nothing is “always the same.” In the Andante of this Symphony, for instance, there are no dynamics markings at all, yet Fischer plays it at a moderate mp with further gradations down to p or pp and back again. By such means does he create and sustain interest.
The notes also explain the reason why the music sounds so vibrant and alive: His string players all use steel strings, which gives the music a consistently “edgy” quality that reveals, as Fischer put it, Mozart’s “earthily honest side.” The more you think about it, the more this makes sense, since Mozart was strongly influenced by both Haydn and C. P. E. Bach, both of whom exploited an earthy, dramatic quality in their symphonies.
Probably the most difficult aspect of the earlier symphonies to overcome was the monotony of orchestration. Clarinets, horns, and other instruments only begin to appear in Mozart’s symphonies later on; earlier, the composer had to rely on his ingenuity of counter-rhythms and occasional harmonic changes to sustain interest, and unlike Haydn, Mozart almost invariably sought the widest possible popularity for his music (perhaps one of the reasons why Toscanini found it “always the same”). Yet, as the notes also point out, in Mozart’s day no one bothered to listen to music more than three years old as a rule. It was all about what was new, not what had come before. No one gave a hoot back then about “historical performance practice” because they didn’t want it and wouldn’t have listened if you gave it to them.
I still feel that occasional movements, such as the Andantes of the “Paris” Symphony and No. 39, are a shade too fast for my taste, but in the context of Fischer’s overall musical conception what he plays works very well. I can now accept what I hear in those later symphonies because my tolerance was built up through what he did with the numerous early works. In short, I have taken this symphonic journey with Fischer, the only difference being that I did it in 12 nights rather than in seven years.
I have now replaced the Jaap ter Linden set of Mozart symphonies on my shelf with this one. I strongly urge you to give them a listen and see if you don’t agree.
The term "chamber music" broadly implies music on an intimate scale performed by a limited number of musicians. The heart of civilized 18th-century European musical culture is best represented by that most perfect of forms the string quartet, developed by Haydn and Mozart into models of elegance and expressive balance. Embracing instruments new for his time, Mozart’s chamber music also resulted in sublime masterpieces such as the Clarinet Quintet, but it was Beethoven who expanded the length and complexity of the string quartet to its limits. Beethoven left an indelible mark of progress and change on every genre of music, and both the ‘Archduke’ Trio and ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata are milestones in chamber music history.
Beethoven’s romantic independence of spirit and powerfully personal musical language was carried forward by Schubert and Mendelssohn, both of whom introduced emotion-enhancing literary sentiments into their expressive range. The symphonic proportions of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet places it at the pinnacle of the classical line through Mozart and Beethoven, but romantic ideals in music were already being applied to the cause of national identity. Antonín Dvorák’s ‘Dumky’ Trio takes its name from a ballad of lament, integrating national dance elements to create a distinctive Czech and Bohemian flavor. The move away from German stylistic examples by the Russian ‘mighty handful’ can be heard in Borodin’s soulful String Quartet No 2. Innovation in chamber music can be found everywhere, but there are few such works as striking as César Franck’s Violin Sonata, a flawless synthesis of classical proportion and the spirit of romanticism in its cyclic development of a single theme.
This collection of great chamber music brings together nine giants of music in works which reveal their most immediate and individual expressive worlds: proof if ever any was needed that less can be much, much more.
Tchaikovsky: Complete Symphonies / Jansons, Oslo Philharmonic
Chandos
CD
$54.99Sep 01, 2006
Mariss Jansons's outstanding Tchaikovsky series with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra makes a welcome appearance in this boxed set, confirming all I have said about the individual issues over the last three years, It may still seem odd to those who have not sampled these consistently refreshing, beautifully paced and structured performances that the Oslo Philharmonic can so successfully match itself against the world's greatest orchestras, but the evidence here seems clearer to me every time I hear them and make comparisons.
Jansons in Tchaikovsky has the gift of conveying the full power and poetry of these works, naturally without indulging in wilful distortions or exaggerations. The whole set provides a bench-mark in this area, not only for interpretation but for brilliant and atmospheric recording quality too, against which others now have to be judged.
This is as fine a Sibelius cycle as any available, and the performances of Symphonies Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7, as well as the Violin Concerto, are uniformly top recommendations. All of the individual discs have been previously reviewed, and my only reservations (incidentally not shared by my colleague Victor Carr Jr, who covered the original release) concern Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6, particularly the latter, which strikes me as just a touch lacking in energy and directness. That doesn't mean the playing isn't very beautiful: indeed, it may be excessively so, and that takes some of the Sibelian edge off of the performance. Still, for the most part these are wonderful interpretations, and if you want a complete Sibelius cycle from top Finnish performers, then this set represents an obvious first choice, alongside Vänskä's very different and equally fine Lahti series on BIS. You simply can't go wrong either way.
The Best Of Erik Satie / Körmendi, Kaltenbach, Nancy So
Naxos
CD
$19.99May 01, 2000
For me, the real "Best of Satie" would include at least excerpts from the opera Socrate and the ballet Parade. But this is a nice overview of the eccentric composer's keyboard gems, culled from Klára Körmendi's excellent Satie cycle for Naxos. Many pianists take Satie's wistful melodic sensibility as license to let the music wallow and droop. Körmendi will have none of that. Her sensitive, expertly colored playing brings uncommon, refreshing urgency to the first three Nocturnes, the well-worn Gymnopédies, and all six Gnossiennes. Moreover, she has a way of making the composer's idiosyncratic expressive indications audible without hitting listeners over the head. The disc concludes with the Gymnopédies in their familiar orchestrations by Debussy (Nos. 1 & 3) and Roland-Manuel (No. 2). The French orchestra plays rather patchily in the first but redeems itself with some very nice playing in the other two. No. 3 features a lovely oboe soloist surrounded by silvery, reed-organ-like high strings. If you're looking for a Satie piano music start-up kit, this is the one. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
