Paschale Mysterium: Gregorian Chant for Easter

Arvo Pärt's justly popular 'Tabula Rasa' boasts the style by which we have come to know this appealingly distinctive Estonian composer. He arrived at this later style, however, only in the late 1970s, and his path leading to that point is strewn with fascinating compositions, two of which are included here.
Marking his departure from strict serialism, the 1964 'Collage über BACH' takes its inspiration from Baroque forms while nodding to tonality. The entire piece has a somber cast, from the opening "Toccata" movement's angular edginess (reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's music for 'Psycho') to the lovely "Sarabande" that turns darkly discordant (which features a very fine unnamed oboe soloist) to the agitated grimness of the closing "Ricercare."
If 'Collage' reminds one of a Hitchcock film, then Pärt's Symphony No. 3 (1971), in its neo-Romantic spin on both (and often alternately) medieval and Renaissance polyphony, sounds like a soundtrack for a film on an Arthurian legend. The most effective piece is, indeed, 'Tabula Rasa' in which Pärt brilliantly and idiosyncratically pays homage to Vivaldi by locating the seeds of his own minimalist aesthetic in Baroque figurations and suspension-resolutions.

Arvo Pärt’s piano works range from his first public statement as a composer, the Zwei Sonatinen, to his latest, the life affirming miniature Für Anna Maria. Moving away from his 1960s atonal language, Pärt found an essence of truth in music embodied in the simple lines of Für Alina. Lamentate is a vast monument which the composer has described as a lament ‘not for the dead, but for the living’. Multi award-winning pianist Ralph van Raat has been praised for his ‘sensitive and technically refined’ playing of Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds (8.572444) (MusicWeb International).

Classical Music

Highly lauded within the classical music world, Arvo Pärt has forged a singular path through the genre. The BERLINER MASSE was commissioned in 1990 for the Ninetieth Deutsche Katholikentag in Berlin, and finally came to fruition in 1997. Drawing on some haunting strings and choral arrangements, the work is extremely moving. Also included here is SUMMA, which Pärt conceived in 1977, and MAGNIFICAT, from 1989. They are beautifully performed by the Elora Festival Singers and Orchestra, under the watchful eye of conductor Noel Edison.

An essential addition to many collections.

Jerusalem and I was glad have been recorded zillions of times, as you might expect given their exalted status among English cathedral choral works. Even the six motets that make up the Songs of Farewell have been well-treated on disc, and at least one other recording, from St. George's Chapel Windsor Castle (Hyperion), nearly duplicates this program. Among all of those recordings you inevitably could find performances of individual works that are to some degree better than the ones presented here, but Christopher Stokes and his 25-voice Manchester Cathedral Choir (15 boy-and-girl trebles joined with 10 altos, tenors, and basses), along with organist Jeffrey Makinson and the Naxos production team, give lovers of this music the spacious cathedral ambience and the spirited performances they expect, technically sound and fervently expressed.

It's nearly impossible to imagine ever growing tired of Parry's magnificent setting of William Blake's Jerusalem, nor of such sensitive and deeply moving realizations of the poetry in the Songs of Farewell, particularly Thomas Campion's Never weather-beaten sail and Psalm 39 (Lord, let me know mine end). Here they are treated as respectfully and rendered as powerfully as any choir has done, and rarely do you hear such lovely treble singing as in the selection from Parry's oratorio Judith (Long since in Egypt's plenteous land). Speaking of trebles, the recording--and apparently the cathedral space itself--favors them at the expense of the lower voices, and the organ, wonderful as it is to hear, also tends to be a bit too assertive at times. But these are not criticisms serious enough to undermine the very fine, eminently repeatable performances. In fact, for musical value and price, you can't really do better than this in this repertoire. Definitely recommended.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

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This is a perfect introduction to the choral music of Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. The repertoire covers his three most popular choral works alongside three great works that are typically known to Parry enthusiasts and those who inhabit the organ loft or choir stalls: the two groups are not mutually exclusive. I did a little survey: I asked five people (not British Music fans) to name a piece of music by Parry. Only one was able to suggest Jerusalem, but added that it might have been by Elgar ... The other four, unsurprisingly, had heard of this great hymn, but the composer remained a blank spot.

The CD gets off to a great start with the anthem I was glad. It was originally written for the Coronation of Edward VII and was also performed at the Service for George VI and the present Queen. Manchester Cathedral Choir cope well with this powerful music and the organ is heard to impressive effect. As is traditional, the acclamations of 'Vivat Rex' or 'Regina' are omitted in this recording. One wonders if this anthem will be used at subsequent Coronations (long, long may that be in the future) or whether something more egalitarian and balanced towards 'world music' will be the order of the day?

The Great Service in D major is a fine piece of choral music that can be used in both a liturgical or concert setting. At nearly nine minutes the Magnificat may be a little long for St Swithun's Parish Church Evensong, but in Cathedrals this would be an acceptable length. Both parts of the Canticles reveal a confident composer who is totally at home in the world of Anglican Church music. The service was written in 1881 for Trinity College Cambridge, however it was not published until 1984. This is a great setting that is a million miles away from the popular view that Victorian church music was over-sentimental and stodgy.

The Songs of Farewell are quite simply stunning. This is a major work that explores feelings about the transience of life and involves much reflection by the composer back across the years of his musical achievement. Parry stated that, at seventy years of age, he had reached 'the last milestone.' It would be a project worthy of a dissertation or a thesis to explore the composer's religious sensibilities at this time in his life. He was not a conventionally Christian believer and would have seen the texts in a personal context rather than liturgical. Yet each of these motets is deeply moving and invariably inspiring.

I guess that many habitués of cathedral and parish churches will know the opening My Soul, there is a country - a fine setting of Henry Vaughan's fundamentally optimistic words. Yet the remaining five motets are less often performed and less well known. The composer provides considerable interest in these subsequent motets by use of varying number of parts and a fine balance of a fundamentally harmonic language over against more complex but never 'academic' contrapuntal workings.

Perhaps the mood of the entire collection is best summed up by the last motet Lord, let me know mine end. The last words of this psalm ask God to 'O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen'. Hardly the thoughts of a confident evangelical who 'knew' that he was going to join the saints in glory but more those of a deep-seated agnostic.

For me the most beautiful work on this CD is Hear my words, ye people. It is a compendium of texts taken from the Old Testament books of Job, Isaiah and the Psalms. The work was originally composed for the 1894 Festival of the Salisbury Diocesan Choral Association. Unbelievably, it was conceived for 2000 singers with a semi-chorus of some 400! There was an organ accompaniment and brass band present the first performance. The choral music part was kept relatively simple, as there was little time for rehearsal. The more complex music was given to the soprano and baritone soloists. In this recording the baritone part is sung by Mark Rowlinson: the other solo parts are taken by groups of choristers. The work concludes with the well-known hymn O Praise ye the Lord, which was a paraphrase of Psalm 150 by Sir Henry Baker. Something tells me that this 'pared-down' version is actually more effective and satisfying than the original. It is a truly gorgeous work that ought to have a secure place in the repertoire.

The penultimate piece is from the oratorio Judith. Many folk will know the hymn-tune Repton, which accompanies the words Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, without realising the source of the text and the music. Judith was a highly successful oratorio, which was first performed in 1888. The words are from a poem entitled The Brewing of Soma by the American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. It is given here with great variety of dynamics and constant attention to the meaning of the words.

Jerusalem is the last piece on this CD. Naturally, it is in Parry's incarnation - with organ accompaniment rather than the gorgeous, but manifestly overblown Elgarian version. No matter how many times I hear this work I cannot help feeling that it is one of the finest hymns ever composed on Earth or in Heaven. For the record it was written during the Great War at the suggestion of Robert Bridges and Walford Davies for a 'Fight for Right' meeting at the Queen's Hall in London.

The quality of the recording is superb, the programmes notes by Keith Anderson are suitably informative and the texts of all the works are provided. The cover picture is entitled 'Beach Sunset' and presumably alludes to the 'Country beyond the Stars'. Yet it has a definite feel of Morecambe Bay about it.  
The obvious comparison for this CD is the Hyperion recording of the Choir of St George's Chapel of Windsor conducted by Christopher Robinson. This was - and still is - an essential disc for all Parry enthusiasts and received excellent reviews. However, I have always had a soft spot for Manchester Cathedral: my father's family were from Lancashire and looked towards this great City for work, worship and pleasure. I first visited cathedral in the early seventies, and have enjoyed musical events and services there on an occasional basis over the years. This present recording is a fine monument to a great musical and ecclesiastical tradition. It will be an essential addition to many collections.

John France, MusicWeb International

2014 is the centenary year of Andrzej Panufnik and, while his orchestral music has received attention, his innovative string quartets remain neglected. Bittersweet harmonies characterize the First Quartet. The Second Quartet, whose subtitle ‘Messages’ refers to the mysterious sounds of telegraph poles vibrating in the wind, is notable for its motivic coherence and emotional intensity. The Third Quartet, subtitled ‘Wycinanki’, a reference to paper cuts familiar in Polish rustic art, ends with one of Panufnik’s most moving statements. Lutosławski’s dramatic and experimental String Quartet was written when he was at the forefront of the European avant-garde.

Includes work(s) by Andrzej Panufnik. Ensemble: Polish Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Mariusz Smolij.

Sinfonía a Granada never less than colourful, Cantos des alma genuinely moving.

Lorenzo Palomo, a native of Córdoba, is a composer in whose music the traditions of Andalusia are never very far to seek – though he now lives in Berlin. His work has been fairly extensively performed in Spain and elsewhere; his Canciones españolas had its first performance, by Montserrat Caballé in 1987 at Carnegie Hall, for example, and his Dulcinea was premiered in May of 2006 in the Berlin Konzerthaus, with the chorus and orchestra of the Berlin Deutsche Oper. This is the second CD devoted to his work in the Naxos series of Spanish Classics: see the review by Göran Forsling and the review by Evan Dickerson.

Cantos del alma sets four poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958), a fellow Andalusian, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956. The four texts chosen concentrate on Jiménez’ poetic skill in the evocation of landscape and object, but the selection also allows Palomo to respond to the poet’s sense of the interaction between the human soul and its surroundings, this being essentially the poetry of a kind of belated romanticism. In his settings, Palomo’s writing for the clarinet is particularly fine, not least at the beginning and end of the sequence. In the last song, ‘Los palacios blancos’, setting lines on the death of a child, the interweaving of soprano and clarinet achieves a poignant beauty, in music which is simultaneously elegiac and expressive of a sense of transfiguration, as the soul of the child enters the ‘white palaces’ of heaven. The four poems are symmetrically separated by an orchestral interlude which carries the title ‘Serenata antillana’. The reference to the Antilles evokes Jiménez’ much loved wife and inspiration, Zenobia Camprubí, whose family came from Puerto Rico – the island coming to be very valuable to the poet. Unfortunately on my copy, this track was faulty, though I could hear enough to find the piece richly evocative. Cantos del alma is the more substantial of the two works on this disc, the poems of Jiménez stimulating Palomo to the composition of music of considerable emotional depth and beauty.

The second work here, Sinfonía a Granada is a little more lightweight. The work was commissioned by the Regional Government of Granada and, though one doesn’t doubt the sincerity of the composer’s fascination with that wonderful city and its surrounding area, there are times when the music doesn’t entirely rise above the level of vivid local colour, when it settles for being a kind of high-class musical tourist brochure. Clarinet and soprano voice are replaced by guitar and soprano, poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez are, as it were, replaced by (lesser) poems by Luis García Montero. Again there are four songs and an instrumental interlude – though this time the interlude occurs after the third song rather than after the second. Montero himself is heard as a narrator. The writing for guitar – played with fluent idiomatic control by Vicente Coves – is steeped in the musical gestures of flamenco, especially the rhythmic patterns of the bulerías. ‘Subiendo a la Alhanbra’ is a kind of musical aubade, and the rhythm of the bulería again dominates in ‘La tierra y el mar’, where affinities with Rodrigo are perhaps most noticeable. ‘Danza del Sacromonte’ was, the composer tells us, inspired by a specific experience: “A couple of years ago I was spending the night in the company of the great flamenco singer, Enrique Morente, and other friends in the narrow streets of Sacromonte. A gipsy girl came out if a cave some distance from us. She was very graceful with long hair, and carrying a guitar. The tapping of her shoes resonated loudly in my ears. Her silhouette, lit up by the moon, stood out marvellously in the night. That image fascinated me”. The result is a striking piece, a miniature tone poem full of vivid colours and rhythmic patterns. It is a piece which might surely find its way into programmes, on disc or in the concert hall, independent of the rest of the Sinfonía a Granada. And perhaps in that suggestion lies the problem. The very title ‘Sinfonia’ perhaps encourages one to expect more unity than one encounters here. The work tends to fragment into five sections; in truth it would have been better described as a suite. As such, it contains - with its echoes of flamenco and gipsy rhythms, of Rodrigo, of the remembered melismata of much older musical traditions, some pleasantly attractive and colourful music, but feels a little lightweight after the powerful songs of the Cantos del alma.

Palomo has been very well served by his performers here. The two instrumental soloists are excellent and any Spanish composer (one is tempted to say any composer) who has his music sung by Maria Bayo is on to a very good thing. The City of Granada Orchestra play with discipline and colour under the direction of Jean-Jacques Kantorow. The whole makes a useful addition to a valuable series.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International



PALOMO Cantos del Alma. 1 Sinfonía a Granada 2 • Maria Bayo (sop); José Luis Estellés (cl); 1 Vicente Coves (gtr); 2 Luis García Montero (nar); 2 Jean-Jacques Kantorow, cond; City of Granada O • NAXOS 8.570420 (57:59)


This is the third Naxos disc of Lorenzo Palomo’s music I have reviewed for Fanfare , and in many ways it is the most integrated. It consists of two substantial song cycles for soprano and orchestra, each employing a different concertante instrument: clarinet in the Cantos del Alma (Songs of the Soul) and guitar in the Sinfonía a Granada.


The first of these was premiered in Barcelona under Jesús López Cobos in 2002. Setting four evocative poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez, the composer makes telling use of the clarinet. In the first song the instrument represents the water bird (which in the poem is an object of fascination for a young girl), and later it contributes staccato rhythmic figures to the “Antillen Serenade.” This, the third song, is the longest movement of the work, beginning in lively style with its catchy instrumental dance before relaxing into a languid conclusion. It celebrates the soul of Puerto Rico, the birthplace of the poet’s wife.


A short march, beginning dramatically, leads to the brief and lyrical final song, “The White Palaces,” in which the singer mourns the death of an angel. (Aside: Can angels die? I would have thought it unlikely.) This cycle is not only beautifully written for the voice and the solo instrument, it also exudes a genuine atmosphere of deep calm. While the second movement (“Dawn Tientos”) reveals a Sephardic influence, overall there is none of the overt Spanish stamp of Palomo’s other works.


Andalusian fingerprints appear in the Granada Symphony , commissioned specifically to celebrate the variety of peoples inhabiting the province of Granada and premiered by these artists in 2007. The cycle begins with solo guitar and a recitation by the poet himself, Luis García Montero. The poetry in this work is more of the picture postcard variety—understandably, considering the specific brief of the commission—to which Palomo has added an all-purpose Andalusian sheen, using the cadences of flamenco as well as themes of a Herbraic and Arabic turn. These are obvious in the instrumental movement “Dance of Sacromonte,” a stomping rhythmic piece that would make a highly satisfying finale to a straightforward guitar concerto.


The symphony is a more public work than the Cantos del Alma , but it still contains moments of gentle lyricism, notably in the closing measures of the central poem, “The Land and the Sea,” and the final poem, “A Snow-Painted Sky.” The latter begins with soprano and guitar alone, and only by degrees does the orchestral backdrop steal in, a very effective moment of musical impressionism.


Performances, as in the other issues of this series, are first-rate. Bayo sings with authority and expression, and the other soloists are likewise excellent. I was greatly impressed with the tone of Estellés’s clarinet. Sound is clear, even though the soloists are placed unnaturally upfront in the balance (especially the guitar in the Granada Symphony ).


Highly recommended: the Cantos del Alma is definitely a keeper. Texts and translations of the poems are accessible on the Naxos Web site.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Palestrina: Missa Sine Nomine - Missa L'Homme Arme

Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli

Includes work(s) by Giovanni Paisiello. Ensemble: Collegium Philarmonicum Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Gennaro Cappabianca. Soloist: Francesco Nicolosi.

Recording information: Il Palazzo reale di Caserta e i Borboni di Napoli, Cast (05/2007); Il Palazzo reale di Caserta e i Borboni di Napoli, Cast (11/2007).

Paganini: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

PAGANINI: Music for Violin and Guitar, Vol. 1