November 20, 2009

The King's Singers - From The Heart

An eclectic mix of five modern songs on an EP. "My heart is a holy place" - Patricia Van Ness has rearranged and extended the beautiful ‘Cor meum est templum sacrum’ for The King’s Singers to become ‘My heart is a holy place’. "Conceit" - A haunting piece written for The King’s Singers in 2009 by Graham Lack with text by writer/poet Mervyn Peake, in which things may not always be as they first appear. "Pie Jesu" - British classical radio presenter and former rock guitarist, John Brunning, wrote a simple setting of ‘Pie Jesu’ three years ago, and it became an instant hit in the UK. "Out of the Woods" - Bluegrass band Nickel Creek’s song. 'Out of the Woods' has great harmonies, a wonderful folksy melody and a mesmeric improvisation section. Arranged by Philip Lawson. "Hallelujah" - One of a huge number of hit songs from the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, arranged here by Philip Lawson. 4233 CD 9.95

Posted by acapnews at 12:00 AM

November 11, 2009

Estonian National Male Choir - Visions Beyond Estonia

Three selections of Veljo Tormis music recorded my Ants Soots and Estonian National Male Choir have been published under the title "Vision of Estonia", the present fourth selection consists of compositions based on the old songs of other peoples, hence the title "Visions Beyond Estonia". Though Tormis has always stressed that he's is a national composer, and the previous "Visions" have clearly introduced him as an Estonian composer, his combative position for Estonian cultural heritage is actually quite open and sympathetic with the defense of nature, traditional cultures and endangered peoples in general. 3517 CD 15.95

Posted by acapnews at 12:00 AM

November 6, 2009

Ensemble Amarcord - Restless Love

With its tenth recording Ensemble Amarcord takes a stroll through the musical Leipzig of the nineteenth century. Simultaneously, this anniversary release is a reverence to the hometown of the five world-class vocalists. They obviously feel very much at home in this repertoire, and the listener is accorded many a musical discovery in Restless Love. Besides widely known songs from which they elicit new nuances by means of their just as fresh as knowledgeable creative will, eight of the titles appear for the first time on this CD, including a piece for male choir by Mendelssohn! The Weihgesang (Consecration Song) for Goethe‚s funeral service was rediscovered by the Leipzig Mendelssohn researcher Ralf Wehner. Yet, besides the music of the then Gewandhaus music director Felix Mendelssohn and his friend Robert Schumann, it is exactly the today hardly known composers that make this CD so remarkable. This is music by Adolf Eduard Marschner, a relative of the crazy, brilliant Heinrich Marschner, who was also active in Leipzig ˆ or the musical jewels by Carl Steinacker, August Mühling, and Carl Friedrich Zöllner, whose works have long been forgotten by the history of musical reception. Unjustly, for the songs of love and pain that amaracord has bundled together in Restless Love are without exception musical treasures. 4232 CD 16.95

Posted by acapnews at 12:00 AM

November 3, 2009

Vox Aurea Choir - Tuhat Kertaa Tutat Vuotta

Pekka Kostiainen (b.1944) is perhaps not known as well as other Finnish composers outside his native land. Although he wrote mainly instrumental music early in his career, he now concentrates on choral music. Pekka Kostiainen is the present conductor and composes extensively for them. Vox Aurea have excelled in performing his demanding but inspiring music, and taking it on their world tours. Tuhat kertaa tuhat vuotta (A thousand times a thousand years) is the most substantial a capella work on this 6th disc of Alba's "Kostiainen Conducts Kostiainen" series. It is a setting of a poem by Lauri Viita, one of the central characters of post-World War II literature in Finland, and narrates the origin of the world from an empty Cosmos, the building of mountains, ocean formation and the development of life. Softly vibrating tone-clusters suggest the void, magically expanding into the warm church acoustic, and a variety of eerie vocalisations including clicks, hisses and open-mouth tapping give way to firmer melodic lines. The altos, with more robust tone than the sweet sopranos, intone the verses in a modal runic chant style which derives from the Kalevala, the Finnish National epic, very close to the narrative style used by Sibelius in Kullervo and his epic tone poems. The choir are divided into four groups, two of sopranos and two altos, and the music moves antiphonally across the sound stage, suggesting the dynamic events at hand. This really is a tour-de-force of choral pictorialism, a miniature epic in its own right. 4229 CD 15.95

Posted by acapnews at 12:55 AM