Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir / Paul Spicer ROSA MYSTICA

ROSA MYSTICA

Winchester Cathedral Choir / Andrew Lumsden JOHN TAVENER Angels

I am finishing this review precisely on what would have been John Tavener’s 75th birthday. Such an anniversary causes one to reflect anew upon what was by any standards a remarkable career, and this outstanding new recording is a very good way of so doing. Tavener had a long and close association with Winchester (and still does, in fact, in the form of the Tavener Centre), so it was a particularly inspired idea to commission booklet notes from Martin Neary, the former Organist and Master of the Music, who was the commissioner and first performer of so many of the composer’s works.

One such example is God is with us, commissioned for the 1987 carol service. I have to say that I had never found this to be one of Tavener’s most successful works, but this performance has won me over, for two reasons. The first is that tenor William Kendall makes such a fine job of the solo part, and the second is that the unexpected and dramatic entry of the organ here sounds utterly convincing, which has everything to do with the way Andrew Lumsden paces the work. This is followed by two works written two years earlier, the first Hymn to the Mother of God and Love bade me welcome, both outstanding pieces born of a unique imagination. Only Tavener would have extracted so much from a simple device as the double-choir canon in the Hymn, or thought of setting Herbert in a way that suggests Bulgarian chant.

Other Tavener classics appear too, most notably Song for Athene, but much attention is also paid to later works, including five anthems from The Veil of the Temple (2002) and They are all gone into the world of light, a setting of Henry Vaughan from 2011. There is a lushness about these works, harmonically speaking, that is generally absent from the earlier pieces, but Tavener’s own voice is nevertheless always apparent: indeed, I have been at pains to point out on more than one occasion that his voice is clearly audible in his music from whatever period – the compositional voice of Últimos Ritos is absolutely the same as that of Mary of Egypt, for example. One piece I am particularly pleased to hear again is Annunciation from 1992. Such is the immediacy of this work that you would swear that Tavener had actually been present when the Archangel brought the news to Mary. It is followed by a superb rendition of As one who has slept, once again brought alive by the impeccable pacing and by the fantastic blend of the choir (do they ever breathe?). This is a showroom demonstration of just what boy and girl choristers singing together can achieve. A truly magnificent birthday present. (Ivan Moody / Gramophone)

Christian-Pierre La Marca CANTUS

The originality of this album’s programme is its focus on famous sacred pieces transcribed for the warm and lyrical voice of the cello, an instrument whose tone is certainly one of the closest to the singing voice. The words of the Magnificat, Requiem, Stabat Mater or Ave Maria - well known in the repertoire of vocal sacred music - fade here to better reveal the development of musical emotion aroused by the melody itself, and the subtlety of the accompaniments (organ, viola, theorbo, voice) in reinforcing and supporting the expressiveness of the singing. Inspired by sacred texts, the melodies by Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and Pergolesi reveal the strength and intensity of their expression, even without words, and reinforce the idea developed from the late eighteenth century that music, by its power of suggestion and evocation, goes beyond words to express the unspeakable, sometimes with simplicity and depth. From Taverner to Thierry Escaich, and also Allegri, Handel, Franck and Fauré, the recorded repertoire covers a period from the sixteenth to twenty-first century and includes some of the most important names in sacred music. (Presto Classical)

Daniel Hope MY TRIBUTE TO YEHUDI MENUHIN

Yehudi Menuhin is the reason I became a violinist. As he used to say, I fell into his lap as a baby of two.

For my parents, life in 1970s South Africa had become intolerable, marked as it was by that tragedy mingled with farce, so characteristic of the appalling apartheid regime. We lived in Durban, where my father co-founded the literary magazine Bolt, publishing poems by writers of many races. From that moment on, his phone was tapped and my parents were placed under permanent surveillance. They had no option but to leave the country, but my father was only offered a so-called exit permit. This meant you could leave but never return.

My parents settled in London, where very soon their money ran out. We had nowhere to go.

At the eleventh hour, facing a calamity, we had some incredible luck: an employment agency offered my mother a compelling choice of jobs: secretary to either the Archbishop of Canterbury or to the violinist, Yehudi Menuhin. She chose Menuhin, and their association lasted 24 years until his death.

Our life changed immediately and forever. For the next years, I grew up in Menuhin’s house in Highgate, London, where my mother would take me every day to play, while she worked. Menuhin was a wonderfully spontaneous man. He’d leave his Guarneri del Gesù in an open violin case on the table, he never put it away. He picked it up and played it, almost as if he were drinking a glass of water. He once told me: “One has to play every day. One is like a bird, and can you imagine a bird saying ‘I’m tired today, I don’t feel like flying’?” The violin was a part of him. To this day, his sound remains in my ear, so unique and so fascinatingly beautiful.

Where does one even begin to summarize a unique career spanning seventy-five years by one of the greatest musicians in history? Perhaps Menuhin’s debut in 1924 in San Francisco at the age of seven; or his debut in Berlin in 1929, after which Albert Einstein exclaimed “Now I know there is a God in heaven!” Or his performance and legendary recording of the Elgar concerto under the composer’s baton in 1932; perhaps his visit to the liberated concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen with the composer Benjamin Britten in 1945; or his highly controversial decision to return to Germany in 1947 and to perform with Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic, the first Jewish artist after the war to do so. Only seven of Menuhin’s 82 years were not spent on the road.

Early on in my life, I had the chance to study and perform some of Bartok’s Duos with Menuhin. It was an incredible experience for me, and an introduction to Bartok’s extraordinary music. Many years later, with Menuhin in his role as conductor, we performed over 60 concerts around the world, including almost all of the standard violin concerti, as well as several contemporary works.

These included Mendelssohn’s early D minor Concerto, which he famously discovered in 1951, and also many works for two violins, such as the A minor Double Concerto by Vivaldi.

On 7th March 1999, I played Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto in Düsseldorf, conducted by Lord Menuhin. It was to be Yehudi’s final concert. After the Schnittke, Menuhin encouraged me to play an encore. I spontaneously chose Kaddish, Ravel’s musical version of the Jewish prayer for the dead. I had grown up on Menuhin’s interpretation of this work and wanted to dedicate it to him. Menuhin pushed me out onto the stage and sat amongst the orchestra listening to it. Perhaps it may have been in some way prophetic. Five days later, he passed away.

There’s hardly a passage in all of these great works where I don’t stop for a minute and think of Menuhin.

Yehudi called himself my “musical grandfather”. Now, in celebration of what would have been his centenary, my friends and I can finally pay our respects to this great man, in a manner I feel certain he would have loved. (Daniel Hope)

Maya Beiser WORLD TO COME

Over the course of her career, cellist Maya Beiser has continued to transcend the traditional boundaries of her instrument, reaching far beyond mere interpretation of the classical repertoire, indeed beyond classical music altogether, to become a creative performer drawing on a variety of genres and influences: Eastern, Western, and South American folk music, jazz, even rock & roll.
"World To Come" finds cellist Maya Beiser at the height of her risk-taking and boundary-crossing ambition. She defies not only cultural differences but also conventional oppositions of artist and medium, music and visual art, live performance and recorded material.
David Lang's "World To Come" is written for solo cello, the title piece incorporates pre-recorded cello tracks, theatrical lighting and video projection. A cellist and her voice are separated from the outset and struggle through out to reunite. As Lang describes it, "World To Come" is an introspective and highly personal prayer, a meditation on hope and hopelessness, and an elegy about the life and death of the soul."
Osvaldo Golijov's "Mariel" contains haunting melodies based on the native music of Northern Brazil this new version is for solo cello, drones and vocals.
World To Come also features Arvo Part's "Fratres," which was written for the eight-cello ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic. Beiser plays the piece herself through multi-tracking.