Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Gabriel’s Message (The Renaissance Players/Winsome Evans)

Winsome Evans and the Renaissance Players have long since proved their dedication to early music in Australia, and in this release, the fifth in a series, they bring to life the music of medieval Spain. The Cantigas de Santa Maria is a collection of poems and music in praise of the Virgin Mary, thought to have been written by King Alfonso X during the 13th century. Therein lies the rub, though – how to accurately perform music so ancient? In the liner notes, Evans argues that Spain at the time took influence from Christian, Judaic, and Islamic beliefs, and as such musical performances would presumably be influenced by the same cultures. Therefore, on this recording there’s a kaleidoscopic range of instruments including Middle Eastern percussion such as the darabuka as well as shawms, the Turkish saz, and psalteries. The resulting arrangements are colourful and inventive, with soprano Mina Kanaridis singing particularly well on the hypnotic Poi-las Figuras. Some of the tracks are a little daunting, though. Beeyto Foi o Dia (Blessed and Fortunate), concerning the birth of Mary, is nearly 25 minutes long – rather a lot of medieval Galician. It’s a fine recording, and an even more impressive bit…

July 31, 2015
Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Ešenvalds: Northern Lights (The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge)

Latvian Ēriks Ešenvalds is one of the latest group of non-British composers to be lionised by that most British of establishments, the Oxbridge choral scene. From 2011 to 2013 he was Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge where he collaborated extensively with the choir. Its director, Stephen Layton perceptively describes Ešenvalds as “a compositional chameleon”. Therein lies a dilemma. Undoubtedly greatly talented and adept at bringing alive all manner of different texts, Ešenvalds’ music left me wondering where his real voice lay. His Trinity Te Deum is as grand as any other essay in that genre, while his Merton College Service is served up in attractive homophony spiced with cluster chords, but which leaves the listener thinking it could have been composed any time in the last half-century. O Salutaris Hostia starts promisingly with echoes of MacMillan but becomes cloyingly saccharine. Amazing Grace is given a treatment that would make Hollywood envious. Moving away from church music Ešenvalds becomes more original and individual. Northern Lights and his two settings of Sara Teasdale, The New Moon and Stars, suggest there is salvation beyond conformism. Needless to say, Ešenvalds has the best possible advocates in Layton and his…

July 31, 2015
Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: The Dart of Love (The Orlando Consort)

Like the greatest innovators, poet and composer Guillaume Machaut (c. 1300-1377) was thoroughly versed in the language of past masters. One of the chief representatives of the medieval Ars nova and the latter-day trouvères, and renowned in his day and beyond, Machaut wove tales of courtly love, whose roots are in antiquity, with new-spun threads of startling melodic, rhythmic and harmonic originality. Decades of recordings by the Clemencic Consort, the Deller Consort and the like have in recent times immeasurably enhanced a contemporary reputation which still rests chiefly on one work, the brilliant and innovative Messe de Nostre Dame. Formed in 1988, the one-to-a-part male Orlando Consort stands with the Hilliard Ensemble in making a unique contribution to the on-going conversation with Machaut’s timeless music, of which this second volume in their complete edition for Hyperion. Where their first volume focused on the nine songs from Machaut’s masterpiece Le Voir Dit, The Dart of Love contains representatives from four genres favoured by Machaut: the ballade, the rondeau, the virelai and the motet. Availing themselves of the new performing edition The Complete Works of Guillaume de Machaut, countertenor Matthew Venner, tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith and baritone Donald Greig perform…

July 31, 2015