Jan Novák’s oeuvre has not received the attention it undoubtedly deserves. His music is noted for its lightness, elegance, humor and slight provocation, and, in addition to Martinů and jazz, was inspired by Latin, which he perfectly mastered and applied (almost exclusively) in his works. The young Martinů Voices ensemble presents Jan Novák’s choral pieces, with two of them released on CD for the very first time. A special guest on the album is the composer’s daughter, flautist Clara Nováková.

From Caprice Records comes the only recording ever made of Moses Pergament’s The Jewish Song. The work has never been performed as a whole since this 1974 concert performance. Composed in 1944, The Jewish Song, written for soprano, tenor, chorus and orchestra, takes us through history and switches between moods of deep bitterness, pride and confidence in the future. During his time, Finnish-Swedish composer Moses Pergament (1893-1977) was regarded as one of the major figures in Swedish art music.

This collection of music from the Eton Choirbook, the vast collection of English sacred music from the early Renaissance, is the third in an acclaimed series by Stephen Darlington and the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. A thrilling encounter with the remarkable world of the liturgy of Eton College Chapel in the late 15th century!

This new Christmas recording from the male vocal quartet New York Polyphony treads a traditional path–organizing the program sequentially according to the Christian church calendar (from Advent through Epiphany) and primarily sticking to works with familiar texts and sometimes tunes–but from the outset gives notice that the musical settings will not necessarily be the ones you know–which can be a very good thing, or not quite so much. The familiar chant melody of the Advent hymn Veni Emmanuel opens the disc, the four voices in perfect unison–until an unexpected, biting dissonance on the words “Gaude! Gaude!”, repeated in each verse. While in the rest of the piece composer Andrew Smith couches the basic chant melody in a pleasing framework of combined modern and ancient harmonic ideas, this recurring, deliberately ear-grating sound (especially so with these singers’ superbly-tuned, super-vibrant voices!) seems forced and, unless there’s some kind of intended irony–a bitter call to “Rejoice!” for the coming of the Son of God?–this use of extreme dissonance just doesn’t make sense. As always with these things, others will disagree–and no one can deny either the singers’ individual vocal beauty or the impressive ensemble polish.

That said, throughout the rest of the program we hear many more modern settings of ancient and oft-treated texts, including two excellent ones from New York Polyphony countertenor Geoffrey Williams–Adam lay ybounden and There is no rose, the latter an ingenious and absolutely lovely joining of the text to the S.S. Wesley hymn tune “Hereford”, with added “alleluias”. In a nice programming touch (which I’m surprised isn’t adopted more often on recordings like this) three other settings of that same text are included, from the famous 15th-century “original” from the Trinity Carol Roll to John Scott’s decidedly “modern” realization and Richard Rodney Bennett’s masterful melding of old and new style, music that somehow simultaneously resides comfortably in both the 15th and 21st centuries.

We’re also treated to three versions of the text “Out of your sleep”, including one by the abovementioned Andrew Smith, who in this case casts the music in a harmonic world in which the dissonances that he obviously loves (and who doesn’t, in the right context?) beautifully and effectively enhance the expressive impact of music and text. The other two are the “original” 15th-century version from the Selden Manuscript, characterized by assertive, lively rhythms and oft-repeated phrases, and Richard Rodney Bennett’s equally rousing setting, included, along with the above-mentioned There is no rose, in his set of Five Carols, which are all performed here with the addition of sopranos Sarah Brailey and Elizabeth Baber Weaver. Although these performances of the Bennett carols are very well done, I prefer hearing them with a larger ensemble, which gives them a fuller-bodied sound in which you don’t notice individual voices–The Cambridge Singers’ renditions (Collegium), for instance.

The quartet’s bass, Craig Phillips, contributes two excellent pieces (under the name Alexander Craig)–a beautiful harmonization of the traditional Basque carol known as Gabriel’s Message and, a highlight of the disc, an original setting of a James Joyce poem, “Sleep Now”. You can’t complain about the lovely ensemble sound in Victoria’s beloved O magnum mysterium, but there’s something missing interpretively. The heart of the work, that incredible few bars where all is suspended, where the music perfectly captures and defines that precious, surprising moment where we are awestruck by the one who was worthy to bear Christ the Lord: “O beata Virgo…”, this, one of the most affecting moments in all of music, is rendered here as just another part of the piece. Even those delicious dissonances–yes, dissonances!–just go by without a scratch.

There are many other pieces on the program (24 in all), including a few more Renaissance motets and a very interesting modern setting of a not-so-familiar text, O pia virgo (O blessed Virgin), written for New York Polyphony by Michael McGlynn. It’s another of those skillful blends of ancient and new, and it suits the singers very well. As does all of this music, especially evident in the consistent command of ensemble technique, the presence that’s both easy and confident, and the kind of uniform vocal inflection and expressive nuance that only comes with a devoted and close personal and artistic relationship. In spite of a few reservations, I really enjoyed this recording–especially for the works by Geoffrey Williams, Alexander Craig, and Michael McGlynn, and a very fine rendition of the oft-recorded Bethlehem Down by Peter Warlock. It’s impossible not to be impressed with the work these four singers have produced in their previous releases, and this one joins the group’s much earlier (2007) Christmas disc, I Sing the Birth (with a slightly different vocal lineup) as one that will get plenty of play during the holiday season.

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com [12/2014]

Harry Christophers writes: 'Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 is quite simply one of the greatest works of sacred music ever written and without doubt the most varied and inspired before Handel and Bach began composing their oratorios and passions. Where it was written, why it was written and who it was written for are actually immaterial - suffice it to say it was quite simply his calling card for the big job, Choirmaster at the resplendent Basilica of St Mark in Venice. Its variety alone makes it unique - thrilling psalm settings with virtuosic writing for both multi-part choir and instrumentalists to exotic and sensual settings of texts from the Song of Songs for solo voices. Every movement is full of luscious harmonies, drama and an evocative musical language which is so beautifully constructed for all concerned. 'There has been much scholarly debate about the pitch of Lauda Jerusalem and the Magnificat. These are notated in the part books in a combination of "high" (chiavetti) clefs which dictates a downward transposition of a fourth. For this recording I decided to include both versions, one at high pitch and one at low, so that you the listener can determine your own preference.'

Classical Music

Choral Arts newest release features the music of Eric Barnum. In "Life Stories" the composer sets poetry about love in different times and situations in life. Mr. Barnum is Director of Choral Music at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He holds a DMA in Choral Conducting from the University of Washington, an advanced degree in conducting from Minnesota State University as well as BA degrees in Composition and Vocal Performance from Bemidji State University (MN). Barnum’s choral music has become particularly popular with high school choirs, with many of them commissioning new works from him. Robert Sparks assembled Choral Arts from Seattle’s best singers for a choral concert directed by famed Swedish conductor Erik Erikson. Following the concert, the group decided to continue under Sparks’ leadership, quickly becoming Seattle’s premiere choral ensemble. In 2007, Robert Bode became AD, and in 2010 Bode and Choral Arts won the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence from Chorus America. Also in 2010, Choral Arts’ Gothic CD, “Mornings Like This” won the American Prize for choral recorded music. In 2013, “Shall We Gather at the River” placed second in the America Prize. They have again been nominated for the American Prize in 2014.

It took more than five decades after the Psalms of David for Krzysztof Penderecki to produce another large-scale vocal-instrumental work setting Polish texts. It was a commission from the Fryderyk Chopin National Institute for a piece to be performed at the final concert of the Chopin Bicentenary celebrations that offered Penderecki a suitable opportunity to turn again to Polish poetry. The conductor Wojciech Rajski leads the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and a trio of vocal soloists.

With their new album “Madrigals of Madness” the Calmus Ensemble presents a musical journey to 16th and 17th c. Europe with madrigals from Gibbons, Flecha, Monteverdi, Gesualdo and Desprez. This first CD of a promised future series of madrigal compilations about the different emotions pictured in the music is about the madness found in love, war, loneliness and lovesickness. The liner notes contain an interview with a psychiatrist about madness from a medical point of view. A striking blend of sound, precision, lightness and wit: these are the hallmarks of Calmus – a unique line-up of soprano, countertenor, tenor, baritone and bass voices – now one of the most successful vocal groups in Germany. The reach of their activities is constantly expanding, taking them throughout Europe as well as North and South America. They are naturally at home in the vocal music of the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Romantic, with music of our own time – including pop, folk and jazz, as well as chansons and evergreens from the 1920s – also a real passion. Over the years Calmus has commissioned numerous new works and given many world premieres.

The “Vokalhelden” [vocal heroes] from the Education Program of the Berlin Philharmonic interpret 22 children’s songs from throughout all of Europe in arrangements by Peter Schindler. + The songs are performed in their respective languages or in a German transcription. + This CD is part of the “Lieder Project” an effort that promotes and benefits singing with children. + It emphasizes quality and is designed especially for children. + Proceeds from the Lieder Project are donated to causes furthering singing with children.

Dunedin Consort made its Linn debut with this 2001 recording of a cappella vocal music by America's two most famous 20th c. composers: Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber. + In their settings for unaccompanied chorus, each had an instinctive feel for the human voice, a natural gift for word-setting, and a pure style of writing that rarely, if ever, obscured its literary dimension. + Winners of two Gramophone Awards, the Dunedin Consort has established a reputation as one of the finest period performance choirs around. + “…a stunning performance, and a brilliant recording.’ (Hi-Fi Choice)

Each Christmas season at Brigham Young University over 500 vocalists and instrumentalists celebrate the season in song. + With a strong belief in the spiritual character of music, the BYU students and conductors have achieved performances that are alive, fresh, and heartfelt—performances that overcome boundaries and draw people together. + The music on this CD was recorded during the live performances of the December 2013 "Celebration of Christmas" concerts. + The BYU Singers, BYU Concert Choir, BYU Men’s Chorus, BYU Women’s Chorus, and BYU Philharmonic Orchestra inspire listeners with their spirit, talent, and performance artistry. + These musical organizations are known for their unity, due in part to the superb technical proficiency achieved under choral conductors Ronald Staheli, Rosalind Hall and Jean Applonie as well as Philharmonic conductor Kory Katseanes. + As one critic observed, “The spiritual element is present in each piece the choirs sing.”

In its latest project, the Chorus sine nomine, one of Austria’s leading choirs, under its director Johannes Hiemetsberger, has turned to a very special work: the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri in an arrangement for saxophone and three choirs a cappella by Vladimir Ivanoff. + The setting of the 51st Psalm from the 1630s, which is uniquely captivating due to its simplicity, was a fixed component of the liturgy of Easter week in the Sixtine Chapel in Rome for over 250 years and soon achieved cult status because of the high penalties on its ‘pirate copy’.

To mark what would’ve been the late choral as conductor, pedagogue and organizer Uwe Gronostay’s 75th birthday, audite is releasing the present Christmas carols CD recorded for the RIAS Berlin during the 14 years (1972-86) of his period as RIAS Chamber Choir artistic director. + The Christmas carols form a dramaturgical cycle, beginning with the mysterious night into which falls the light of God; narrative and devotional songs as well as hymns of praise follow, leading to the birth of Christ, then back into the night that also symbolically bears within itself the dawning of the new day.

Luigi Nono’s late style, a world of sharply-etched, strikingly sparse sound forms set against a background of silence, made a deep impression on the younger Wolfgang Rihm, whose works from the mid-80s onwards show clearly the imprint of the Italian master’s visionary clarity. + This recording of works for differing ensembles of solo voices shows another commonly held trait: passionate engagement with their fellow human beings, giving rise to a music of searing and shocking directness. + This new disc features music that has been a part of the EXAUDI ensemble’s lifeblood since its foundation.

Despite our increasingly secular society, many modern composers, inspired by ancient religious texts, have written music that is spiritual, pure and remarkably peaceful. + This release, a celebration of modern sacred music composed 1983-2011, and much of it of Russian or East-European origin, includes young Ukrainian composer Dimitri Tchesnokov’s Three Sacred Songs, Alfred Schnittke’s Three Sacred Hymns and more established works such as Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat. + The young conductor Léo Warynski directs Les Métaboles, who sing Russian and Latin with excellent diction and clear focus.

Franz Hauk and the Simon Mayr Chorus and Ensemble have spearheaded the revival of themusic of Johann Simon Mayr who was born in Bavaria but lived in Italy. In the latestinstalment of their critically acclaimed recordings they turn to Il sogno di Partenope, anallegorical staged cantata composed to mark the rebuilding of the Teatro San Carlo in Naplesfollowing a fire in February 1816. Mayr’s significance as an intermediary between the operaseria of the late eighteenth-century and the melodrama of the early-nineteenth is reflected inthis important work, a unique kind of ‘cantata opera’ of which only the second act survives.

A High Point in the CPE Bach Anniversary Year: Frieder Bernius and the Kammerchor Stuttgart are marking the composer’s 300th anniversary with a recording of the oratorio "Die Israeliten in der Wüste" (The Israelites in the Wilderness). In 1768, right at the beginning of his long period as musical director of the Hamburg principal churches, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed this masterpiece. The new, sensitive musical language he used delighted contemporaries and colleagues alike. This recording contributes a fitting concluding note to the anniversary year.

When Johann Hermann Schein became Kantor at the church of Saint Thomas in Leipzig in 1616, he had, on the one hand, to satisfy the liturgical demands of his Lutheran parish and, on the other, compose music that was truly contemporary, sensible to the new style coming out of Italy. Schein exploited the new possibilities brought by the basso continuo, demonstrated his mastery of musical rhetoric and wrote extremely ambitious music of great expressive force. The instrumentation calls for instruments such as the cornet, trombone and dulcian, Schein drawing his musicians from the forces of the Stadtpfeiffer and Ratsmusiker, guilds of instrumentalists attached to the City of Leipzig since the 15th century. For this musical portrait of Schein, one of the greatest German composers of the 17th century and one of J. S. Bachs most talented predecessors, InAlto presents an itinerary to the sources of the German cantata and testimony to the extraordinary tradition of city musicians perpetuated over the centuries. In addition to Scheins music, this heritage is represented here by Johann Schelle, Gottfried Reiche and J. S. Bach.

Like the roughly contemporaneous Noche oscura and Quattro inni sacri, composed round 1950, the superb Coro di morti is one of the most extraordinary statements of the art of Petrassi at the beginning of the 1940s. It remains one of the most admired and frequently performed of his compositions. According to Cardinal Andrea Lanza, the work, composed and premiered during the Second World War, reveals a marked ‘opposition in discourse... between the solitude of man and the destruction surrounding him’, all of which is clearly relayed in the harrowing contrast between relaxed choral lines on the one hand and solid conglomeration of instruments on the other.

The Partita is one of the earliest works Petrassi composed, yet one of his most famous and still-performed. It achieves explosive brilliance and shows the composer’s precocious and accomplished control of orchestral technique. - Chandos

Bonaventura Rubino's Missa de Morti (Requiem Mass) is presented here within the liturgical and musical context that is peculiar to this friar from Bergamo. The polyphonic sections for voices and basso continuo alternate with the liturgical monodies of the ancient Roman rite, in keeping with the melodic and textual codification of St. Pius V's Missal and the Medicean Gradual. The recording of this Mass was carried out in several points of the church, in order to give the listener the physical sensation of the various spots where the ceremony was taking place and the music was being performed.

Recorded in January 2014 in the grand acoustical environment of St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, by Grammy Award-winning producer Blanton Alspaugh of Soundmirror, this recording once again testifies the stature of South Dakota Chorale as a first-rate ensemble that delivers no less than sublime choral performances.

Sacred Songs of Life and Love features some of the most beautiful works in contemporary Scandinavian and Baltic choral music, including Arvo Pärt’s Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen, selections from Kunt Nystedt’s Prayers of Kierkegaard, Sven-David Sandström’s Four Songs of Love and Algirdas Martinaitis’ Alleluia.

Review:

The South Dakota Chorale are more than well suited to this full-bodied repertoire. They address the common lyricism of the music through a warmth of sound and sonority that is not only notably varied in tone and color but which is all but perfect in blend, ensemble and intonation.

– Gramophone

Recording in an excellent acoustic the Chandos sound team has excelled with well balanced and forthright sonics. Full Latin and French texts are provided together with English translations. Under Andrew Nethsingha's assured direction the choir sing with integrity and a profound devotional intensity. The organists in the Vierne accompany the choir with convincing weight and scale. If the repertoire suits there is absolutely no reason to hesitate about purchasing this Chandos release.

– Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

Dating from his years of 'apprenticeship', these two works shaped Elgar's reputation as a leading orchestrator and most popular British composer of his time. The secular cantata Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf derives from Longfellow's epic poem about Olaf Tryggvason, who became King of Norway in 995. While the text was heavily adapted and augmented, the use of sophisticated compositional techniques, such as extensive motivic work, resulted in music of great power and solemnity. The ballad The Banner of Saint George is based on the story of Saint George of Cappadocia, as related by the Bristol poet Shapcott Wensley. It was commissioned by Britain's leading publisher, Novello, and composed in only one month in 1896. Elgar overcame the prescriptive nature of the words and produced a work of lasting charm, the music rising above the material to create atmosphere, momentum, and color.

Reviews:

What a nice idea it was to have a Norwegian choir and orchestra performing English music about a Norse hero. The combined Norwegian choirs sing very well indeed in both works, and the Bergen Philharmonic plays with verve and distinction. Sir Andrew Davis is just the man for these assignments.

– MusicWeb International

There's nothing stilted about Elgar's music: it crackles with confident vitality...the Norwegian choruses respond with crisp vigor and superb English diction, only faintly (and appropriately) Scandinavian-tinged. Davis's expansive conducting and the excellent Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra bring out Elgar's vivid orchestral textures.

– BBC Music Magazine

• The Temple Church Choir gives the world premiere recording of Nico Muhly's Our Present Charter - a brand new fourmovement work commissioned by the choir to celebrate 800 years since the sealing of the Magna Carta. • Directed by Roger Sayer and featuring organist Greg Morris, the recording also features choral works by Parry, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Bairstow, Tavener and Haydn. • The Temple Church Choir, founded 1841, consists of eighteen boy choristers and twelve professional choirmen. • It is still considered to be one of the finest choirs in London, a reputation it quickly gained after it's founding. • The American composer Nico Muhly (b. 1981) received his Masters in Music from the Juilliard School where he studied under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. • He also spent several years working for Phillip Glass as a MIDI programmer and editor. • His wide scope of work for soloists, ensembles, and organizations covers multiple genres, including music for film, opera, choral, chamber, orchestral, vocal and electronic forces in solo or combinations there of.