This new Christmas disc from superb Danish choir Ars Nova Copenhagen and its smaller cousin the Theatre of Voices must surely contain some of the most gorgeous choral singing ever committed to disc. Not only that – by taking the traditional English Nine Lessons and Carols format and adapting it for a continental audience by including chant, motets, dialogues and traditional folk carols, Dorset-born conductor Paul Hillier, who has been resident in Denmark for nearly ten years, creates a “Christmas oratorio” of truly universal and indeed secular appeal. Here are classics known to all – including Veni veni Emmanuel, In dulci Jubilo, We Three Kings and We Wish You a Merry Christmas – some in attractive new arrangements by Hillier – together with lesser-known works and dialogues taken from the early 17th-century Italian oratorio repertoire by Biasio Tomasi, Alessandro Grandi and Giovanni Francesco Anerio. The narrative structure is further strengthened by the works – all from Italian, German, Danish, English and American sources – being grouped together under headings such as Advent, Annunciation, Nativity and Epiphany. Hillier, himself an accomplished singer, formed the Theatre of Voices in 1990 and has been conducting the Grammy Award-winning… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

A striking musical chiaroscuro born in part out of the agony and the ecstasy of profound spiritual experience. 

Schubert’s final collection of songs, compiled posthumously under the title Schwanengesang, may not trace a narrative journey as unified as those mapped out in Winterreise or Die schöne Müllerin, but the most perceptive interpreters create a dramatic arc all of their own. The final disc in Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis’s triptych of the great Schubert song cycles finds them as emotionally attuned to the music and to one another as in previous volumes. Few tenors can give such potent voice to the bitterness Schubert poured into the lieder of his final year, but Padmore’s engagement with the text (well-rounded diction with plenty of “ch” in the “ach”!) and variety of tone place him among the best. His is a light instrument, but never lightweight – just listen to him bemoan carrying a world of sorrow on his shoulders in Atlas. Although he has developed a wide, almost braying vibrato in recent years, this actually works in his favour here, adding searing stabs of melodic intensity. And he can still rein it in for a warm, pure line, as he does when gently enfolding us in the Serenade.  He could not have asked for a more steadfast, sensitive… Continue reading…

Choral adventurer Paul Hillier brings Australian music to international attention. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Palestrina’s name was synonymous with musical perfection even before his death in 1594, and his reputation as one of the great masters of late-Renaissance, post-Tridentine church polyphony is still as great as it ever was. The Sixteen’s name could equally be said to be synonymous with musical perfection, and the UK choir’s recordings of English, Spanish and Italian Renaissance masterpieces are prized for their combination of passion and precision. This first volume in a projected series dedicated to a selection of Palestrina’s 104 masses and great motet cycle of the biblical Song of Songs takes as its theme the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. The centrepiece is the Missa Assumpta Est Maria; also included are a selection of shorter works such as the motet on which the mass is based and three of the Song of Songs most closely associated with Marian devotion. The performances are, as one would expect, first-rate, and an antidote to the sometimes bloodless approach to this music by The Tallis Scholars. Palestrina’s music moves swiftly and seamlessly between densely woven yet sharply delineated polyphony and rich homophony; furthermore, each part hovers or trembles, drops in or out, plunges or soars according… Continue reading…

Anyone familiar with Schubert’s murderous Die Nonne (The Nun) or Mendelssohn’s frenzied Hexenlied will know the extremes to which a 19th-century composer might go in order to send shivers up the collective spines of his audience with a ghoulish musical yarn. But if an hour of such fare fills you with trepidation, fear not, for with Canadian baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake you will be in very safe hands. This is a brilliantly constructed program of tales told through poetry and music, ranging from blockbusters like Erlkönig, a most deeply felt Lost Chord and ending with a razor-sharp Cole Porter ballad about a social-climbing oyster who goes down the wrong way with inevitable results. Finley is clearly a singer at the very top of his game – the voice always used with intelligence; full, resonant and flexible. I would be hard pressed to think of a rival today who could finesse these songs with such grace, nuance and sheer vocal acting. Drake is in his element as well, breathing fire or exuding pathos in turn.  Standouts include a hypnotic rendition of Edward, Loewe’s tale of patricide revealed, as well as a chilling Der Feuerreiter – Wolf’s ballad of… Continue reading Get unlimited…

In the post-war years of severe, avant-garde experimentation, it was music made with the human voice that was unafraid to embrace humour and joie de vivre. English choral adventurer Paul Hillier describes the spoken-word, sung, screamed and belched works (composed between 1940 and 1980) on this eclectic disc as “pieces [that] tell a story… but avoid getting to the point”. Or to take a leaf out of John Cage’s philosophy book: “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”. Literature buffs will get a kick out of Cage’s rhythmic, irritatingly catchy Story, a setting of Gertrude Stein’s Dr Seuss-esque children’s verse, “Once upon a time the world was round/and you could go on it around and around,” which pings around in fragmented repetitions as five vocalists revel in… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

This CD, another of many which present their entire length free of instruments, is packaged with the usual care and precision of harmonia mundi, sharply constructed and printed with a learned but readable description of the people and their music, with no unwanted capital letters. Cappella Amsterdam has developed under its director Daniel Reuss over the past 40 years to their present formidable strength. Of the 25 members pictured in the group photo in the liner notes, 18 of them are granted individual parts to sing on this recording. But it’s impossible to pick anyone out, as the essence of the idea is that the choir delivers all that is heard, with no allowance for solo deviations. It would take an early vocal music specialist to really separate the ten works presented here into significant individual items, though the words are all there for the asking in the usual languages. The sound quality of the recording is consistent throughout, conforming with all relevant expectations. There is clearly a sizeable market out there for historic sacred music of this type, judging by the number of new releases we see every year. This particular disc meets all the criteria for respectability without…

There are too many ensembles and other individuals to list all of them here, but you will find names as familiar as those of cellist Daniel Yeadon, clarinettist Paul Dean, Cantillation and Gondwana Voices. Confidence is high, then, in the quality and integrity of these performances. The words they have to present are drawn from a number of writers, and in musical terms they sound fine. What the words actually are, though, is entirely lost en route from printed page to eardrum. Stanhope is mindful enough to give his music the structural cohesion to carry us across the waves of his sea, but whatever message he hopes to bring takes a dive. He refers to a variety of rather mystical sounding sources for his compositions, without being too literal about what he does with them. For instance, Aboriginal references in the title track do not mean we hear Aboriginal music. Rather, what we hear is a rhapsodic composition inspired by Stanhope thinking his Aboriginal thoughts. The result is a mix of classically-minded vocal ambience with hints of world music and a dollop of easy listening, which in themselves all work fine. However, if a shadowland is where he is headed,…