April 28, 2008

Notre Dame Glee Club - Beautiful Rain

The Notre Dame Glee Club is a music tradition that began at the University in 1915. Since 1993, Daniel Stowe has led the Glee Club in world-wide tours with great success. Today, Glee Club repertoire is not just football songs, sea shanties and the alma mater theme. In recent years, the choir has been trimmed in numbers to 55 select singers, and their repertoire now focuses upon a wider range of styles: from German art songs, American spirituals, Russian Orthodox, Baroque and Renaissance sacred music, to Barbershop harmony and folk music from nations of the world. The Glee Club's versatility is showcased in the wide variety of genres on this disc.. The musicianship of the Glee Club is all the more remarkable when considering that the Glee Club is a volunteer ensemble, operating independently from music degree programs. Recorded in spring 2007, in the finely-tuned acoustic of Leighton Concert Hall in the newly-finished DiBartolo Performing Arts Center on the campus of University of Notre Dame. 8905 CD 15.95

Posted by acapnews at 11:49 PM

April 5, 2008

Polyphony - Poulenc: Gloria and Motets

Stephen Layton and Polyphony continue to blaze a trail as dazzling interpreters of a wide range of choral music. Here they turn to some of the most bewitching and distinctive choral works of the twentieth century. Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) imbued this well-loved music with a deep expression of his faith and unique personality. Each motet, with its own delightfully etched character, echoes the composer’s study of Bach, Monteverdi, Palestrina, or Gabrieli, but remains stylistically progressive, containing Poulenc’s ingenious chord progressions. The Gloria is one of his most enduringly appealing works. In some ways straightforwardly pious, it is also tinged with mischievous irreverence and a sense of rollicking enjoyment – facets which are deftly captured here by the soprano soloist Susan Gritton, Polyphony, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Britten Sinfonia, all led by Stephen Layton. 8881 CD 18.95

Posted by acapnews at 12:35 AM