Classical Music

The great Spanish composer and priest, Tomas Luis de Victoria, devoted his life to writing supremely uplifting and intense music throughout the church calendar. The Call of the Beloved includes some of the earliest triple-choir music ever to be published and is a reminder of Victoria's joyous and passionate music, complementing his more austere Requiem and music for Holy Week.

The Norwegian six-member a cappella group, Nordic Voices here presents the extraordinary polyphonic music of Tomas Luis de Victoria, a Spanish composer whose music has continued to move people for more than 400 years, crossing geographical, cultural, and even religious barriers. This surround-sound recording comes ten years after a "warm, consistent and moving" (BBC Music) album of Lamentations, which featured pieces by sixteenth-century composers, including Four Lessons by Victoria. Examples of the composer's exceptional output, characterized by a careful setting of the text and an ability to control texture by a constant grouping and regrouping of different voices, here meet the artistic resourcefulness, versatility, technical precision, and freshness of the young ensemble.

For the past 30 years Harry Christophers and his Sixteen choir have been reliable and often inspiring interpreters of Renaissance and Baroque choral music, whether putting their own stamp on the grossly familiar--Handel's Messiah--or introducing us to eminently worthy but obscure repertoire by such early English composers as Fayrfax, Browne, Davy, Lambe, Cornysh, and Carver. (My favorite Messiah remains a rarely-mentioned live performance on Erato from 1983 with The Sixteen and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra led by Ton Koopman.) This ensemble and conductor even ventured into 20th-century music several times, offering classic renditions of the choral works of Benjamin Britten, among other composers.

The Sixteen has tackled Victoria before, notably on its own Coro label, and here the choir shows once again its mastery of style and confident ensemble technique, savoring the rich harmonies and executing Victoria's reams of lovely lines with care for detail and requisite sensitivity to rhythm and dynamics in the shaping of phrases and cadences.

Although the Mass is the "big" piece, impressive as it is, for me highlights are the magnificent five-part motet Alma Redemptoris Mater, the intimate Ne timeas Maria, one of those rare, perfect marriages of text and music, and the joyous Gaude Maria, for which the singers give full measure of enthusiasm. The production, managed by legendary producer and engineer Mark Brown and Mike Hatch, was recorded at the very choral-friendly All Hallows Church in London. This is a must for every serious choral music library--and makes an excellent introduction to Victoria for those looking to explore the work of this inimitable Renaissance master.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

The long-established tradition of devotion to the Virgin Mary resulted in some superb settings from Spanish composers. Supreme amongst them, Victoria set some of his finest music to Marian texts. This recording showcases works for eight parts, some of them for two antiphonal choirs discreetly accompanied by organ and bajón, all displaying the magnificent fervent sonorities for which he is famous.

It is these musicians, full of dedication and responsibility for art, that are needed today in the world. This is the kind of stage creativity that unites the creator’s soul with the soul of the recipient in ecstasy, showing the artist’s genius. The words said by Vladimir Fedoseyev to Victoria Yagling illustrate the enormous respect that this composer and cellist has enjoyed in Russia to this day. Although today Yagling is associated mainly as a phenomenal artist and pedagogue, her composing legacy, especially in Russia, is very popular. Registered in the Main Hall of the Witold Lutoslawski National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, the album of the Reger Duo, co-created by outstanding musicians: Krzysztof Karpeta and Michal Rot, includes the most representative works composed for cello and piano by Yagling over almost 40 years.

Victoria Bond is a distinguished force in contemporary music. She is known for her melodic and dramatic flair, and her orchestral works, chamber pieces and operas have been lauded by The New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding.” This collection of world premiere recordings by Grammy Award-winning ensemble Chicago Pro Musica provides an essential overview of Bond’s multi-faceted inventiveness- from a musical interpretation of tarot cards in Instruments of Revelation, to descriptive and dramatic images of the tragic city of Pompeii in Frescoes and Ash. Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming expresses in music what is left to our imagination in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the mathematics of Binary turn the digits 0 and 1 into variations on a Brazilian samba.

Born in Russia, Victoria Borisova-Ollas has lived in Sweden since 1993. In the international music press, she has been described as ‘a composer with a sparkling individual voice’ and an ‘orchestrator of the greatest virtuosity’. This is borne out by this well-filled album which features five works from 2003 to 2013, in performances by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) with which Borisova-Ollas enjoys a long-standing collaboration. Angelus was composed for the 850th anniversary of the city of Munich and takes the listener on a walk through the city and its many clock towers. Angelus is conducted by Andrey Boreyko, who has championed the music of Borisova-Ollas for many years.