Nigel Short / London Symphony Orchestra / Tenebrae FAURÉ Requiem - J.S. BACH Partitas, Chorales & Ciaconna

 

REQUIEM

 

Nigel Short / London Symphony Orchestra / Tenebrae FAURÉ Requiem - J.S. BACH Partitas, Chorales & Ciaconna

Even though Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor receives top billing on this 2012 release from LSO Live, listeners may be excused if they find the performance of J.S. Bach's Partita in D minor with Chorales to be the most interesting part of the disc. Scholarship has revealed the Partita and its famous Ciaconna (Chaconne) to be connected to various funereal chorale melodies, which Bach wove into his music as a private tribute to his late first wife, Maria Barbara. To help illustrate this, Nigel Short and Tenebrae perform the chorales "Ach Herr, laß dein lieb Engelein," "Christ lag in Todesbanden," "Den Tod niemand swingen kunnt," and "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden," between movements of the Partita and underscoring the Ciaconna where Gordan Nikolic's carefully phrased violin melody makes reference to the chorales. For musical sleuths, this is quite an exercise in detection, though the emotional impact of hearing the violin soaring and weaving through the choir's dirges is not to be underrated. The Bach certainly prepares the listener for the 1893 chamber version of Fauré's somber but soothing Requiem, in which the London Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble accompanies Tenebrae with strength and beauty. While the performances are admirable for their undeniable power to move, the super audio sound of these live recordings is uneven and disconcerting, falling short of the label's usual high standards by being either too thin, as in the Bach, or too booming, as in the Fauré. (Blair Sanderson)

Tenebrae / BBC Symphony Orchestra SYMPHONIC PSALMS & PRAYERS

While this intriguing Judaeo-Christian programme may not fit too well on the shelves of old-style, repertoire-led collectors, it lives up to Tenebrae’s stated core values of “passion and precision”.

Symphony of Psalms, which opens the anthology, seems less concerned with the first of those attributes, at least initially. The expert choir (featuring the female voices which Stravinsky viewed as second best) is relatively modest in size, the instrumental cohort placed further back than you might be used to. Nor is there any attempt to disguise the relatively confined acoustic. That said, everything is wonderfully clean and sharp-etched so that you never feel short-changed. And the timeless, implacable quality of the invention is not the only aspect highlighted as the music proceeds. The second movement brings not only flawless intonation from the woodwinds of the BBC Symphony Orchestra but eruptive, even muscular passion from the singers. The Psalm 150 setting works wonderfully too, finally combining glinting clarity with the trance-like rapture which can get lost in squeaky-clean performances.

Next up is the Schoenberg, notoriously difficult to bring off, especially when performed as here without the instrumental doublings for strings and wind the composer added in 1911 on the advice of Franz Schreker. The writing has probably never sounded less strained, nor more perfectly in tune. By 1923 Schoenberg was describing this final work in his original tonal style as “an illusion for mixed choir, an illusion, as I know today, having believed … when I composed it, that this pure harmony among human beings was conceivable.”

Tricky in a different way, Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms is marginally less successful if only because the balance sometimes seems to mute the strings unduly (this is not after all the reduced, economy version Tenebrae use in concert). Sentimentality is banished but so is some of the music’s escapist charm. Well to the fore is the countertenor of David Allsopp, a former Tenebrae singer. Some might have preferred a less forthright boy treble whatever the threat of sugariness. The final movement’s big tune is taken rather swiftly so as to make a bigger contrast with the psalmist’s subdued farewell.

Ascetic rigour is even less of the essence in Zemlinsky’s Psalm 23, a mildly chromatic pastoral dating from 1910 in which Michael Oliver detected “an ambience half-way between Hollywood and the Three Choirs Festival.” Taking its cue from one of the cutesier passages in the second movement of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony the invention is never hugely memorable but certainly makes for grateful listening, the scoring brightening at the very end in a tinkling recreation of the shepherd’s biblical soundworld of pipe, harp and timbrel.

OLA GJEILO Voices - Piano - Strings

Norwegian born Ola Gjeilo is one of the most frequently performed composers in the choral world; his debut album on a major record label has been released in April 2016 on Decca Classics. An accomplished composer and pianist, improvisations over his own choral works have become a trademark of his collaborations, and feature within the eleven tracks on this self-titled album – “Ola Gjeilo”. Norwegian by birth, Ola’s soundworld has evolved a style that is both contemporary and familiar, cinematic and evocative. (DECCA Classics)

A rising composers debut release on a major label, Gjeilos album on Decca is an important release of heavenly, bewitching, eternal new choral music for our time.

Composer Ola Gjeilo draws on influences from his Nordic background to conjure modern choral music of exceptional beauty.

Radiant vocal textures are enhanced by transcendental instrumental additions; a twinkling piano performed by Ola himself; captivating, exquisite strings; and bewitching acoustic guitar

Ethereal yet tangible, this is music with wide appeal; music of purity and beauty; music at once restful and uplifting.

Gjeilo has evolved a musical style which is at once contemporary and familiar. His concentrated harmonies and rich textures combined with graceful, engaging melody, contain echoes of Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, and the best luscious film score.

Influenced by improvisers, along with composers such as John Adams, Desplat, Newman, Marinelli, Williams, Elgar, Vaughan-Williams and Tavener, Ola describes his music as a lyrical mix of improvisation and classical, and others often describe it as cinematic... evocative, lush, story-telling...