All Shall Be Well

Górecki, Henryk Mikołaj, Holst, Gustav, Panufnik, Roxanna, Rachmaninov, Sergey, różni kompozytorzy, Tavener, John, Vaughan Williams, Ralph

Exultate Singers, May, Richard, Ogden, David

8.572760

Nine composers from very different times, different countries, and drawn to sacred music for different reasons. At the head of that list would be placed the young Ralph Vaughan Williams who spent a considerable amount of time gathering together, arranging and composing the large hymnal now used by the Church of England. He had no religious inclinations, but continued writing music with sacred connotations, one such work being the motet, Valiant-for-Truth, written on the death of a friend in 1940. Roxanna Panufnik’s All Shall Be Well reflected her feelings on a twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, part of the text taken from a Polish prayer as they went into battle.
Holst’s setting of the canticle Nunc dimittis does not appear to have been particularly important to him and was first performed forty years after his death; Bogoroditsye Dyevo, is part of Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil, the pinnacle of Russian sacred works; Gorecki’s vivid and outgoing Totus Tuus came in celebration of Pope John Paul’s third pilgrimage to his native Poland; O magnum mysterium by the Finnish composer, Jaakko Mantyjarvi, spreads modern harmonies over its roots embedded in chant, while the disc’s most extensive work comes from the Finnish composer, Knut Nystedt, with the 13th century poem reflecting Mary’s agony at seeing her son on the cross.
I leave my first choice to last: John Tavener’s Svyati is a masterpiece in expressing his response to death from his adopted Russian Orthodox Church. Exultate’s style of singing stands apart from the mainstream major British choral groups, the warm quality generated by thirty-eight voices, and being much larger than their famous counterparts, the tone is not stressed. Very good sound from the popular UK recording location in St. George’s, Bristol. © 2012 David’s Review Corner

CD x 1

Naxos

27.04.2012

747313276073