Swedish Radio Choir

‘Operatic justice’, writes J.B. Steane in his informative and amusing note for this album, ‘is a law unto itself, and the baritone has been prominent among its victims. Unlucky in love, he is seen in the most favourable light as a father-figure and is otherwise all too often the villain of the piece. He may be manly but is rarely heroic. He will have his arias, his moments of glory, yet (uncannily, it must seem to him) their place is rarely at the centre of the opera, or for that matter, part of its last-act climax.’

Beginning with a bracket of Mozart arias, this colourful recital, recorded by Matthias Goerne in 2000, takes us through the terrains of mid- and late-19th century opera – Wagner, Humperdinck, Richard Strauss – to the early 20th-century with the moving ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen’ from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, to two brief excerpts from Berg’s Wozzeck.

Matthias Goerne both works within the tradition and extends it. Like his predecessors, from Schlusnus to Fischer-Dieskau, he has developed his careers in opera and song side by side, though it is true that his fame and hitherto his work as a recording artist have centred less on opera than on Lieder and oratorio. His operatic recording debut was spotted by Gramophone magazine and described as ‘an impressive appearance’, as Prometheus in the large cast of Braunfels’s Die Vögel.

The CD features a.o. arrangements by Jan Sandström of improvised folk songs of the Sami people - whose singing is among the earliest continuing vocal traditions of Europe - but also recent works like the sixteen-part Kosijat (The Suitors; 2001) by one of the best-known contemporary composers in Finland, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi. The final piece on the cd, Muoayiayaoum is a phonetic formula, a sequence of vowels which open and close.

This is the purpose of the twelve-minute piece, as the composer Anders Hillborg ventures in search of the greatest possible precision in terms of timbre, pulse and dynamics. The level of vocal virtuosity that Peter Dijkstra elicits from his singers of The Swedish Radio Choir, collectively, is breathtaking and his cd ‘Nordic Sounds 1’ with music of Sandström as well as his most recent Poulenc recording ‘Figure Humaine’, received great critical acclaim and important awards!

This double-CD set brings together for the first time two of Claudio Abbado’s Wagner recordings, the first of orchestral music, the second a selection of vocal works with Bryn Terfel, the leading Wagner baritone of our day.

“Terfel brings a wide palette of tone to peer into the Dutchman's soul and express Wolfram's evening thoughts, where his legato and half-voice are admirable” (Gramophone)

Mozart’s Requiem is surrounded by mystery and myth: commissioned anonymously by a wealthy aristocrat through an enigmatic ‘grey messenger’, it was left incomplete when the composer died in 1791. For all that, its true power lies in the solemn, yet often impassioned dignity of its musical language. Conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker, two choirs from Sweden and a carefully chosen quartet of soloists, Muti, in the words of Gramophone leads ‘a big-scale reading, dramatically inclined’.

Bryn Terfel, a gentle man in real life, recruits a gang of “bad boy” characters from opera and musicals to serenade us with tunes from the sinister side of the bass clef. Thoroughly convincing as villains you would not want to meet alone in the dark, Bryn Terfel wields a full, wide ranging bass-baritone ever in service to dramatic instincts rare in any era Bad Boys delivers an original concept sure to seduce the media, wow the classical crowd and exert powerful mass appeal. No singer morphs from Don Giovanni to Mack the Knife to Sweeney Todd with Terfel’s devilish ease – Bad Boys is a delightful box of mixed (dark) musical bonbons

From the revised version of Claudio Abbado’s acclaimed Beethoven cycle with the Berliner Philharmoniker, here are three of the composer’s most popular symphonies. “There are many reasons in favour of this new edition, above all musical ones,” Abbado has written. The New York Times described him as “The most respected living conductor.”

To issue a CD of Poulenc's most important choral work is to make a huge statement, and to take something of a risk. Why does one do it? Aren't there enough recordings already? Having said that, in my case it's simply dire necessity. This work is so beautiful, so impressive, and so important to the canon of twentieth-century choral music, that I cannot resist having a say of my own. I do believe that Poulenc´s 12-part Figure humaine is the most beautiful and impressive a cappella choral work that I know. The poet Eluard and composer Poulenc formed a perfect match. Eluard's poignant and sinister surrealistic texts are very moving, and their wonderfully expressive language depicts the horrors of the Second World War. It is without doubt a harrowing work, with a pièce de résistance to end: the eighth and final movement Liberté. In the most beautiful words, it expresses the omnipresent urge for liberty. Poulenc's setting is simply wonderful, with a gigantic buildup to the concluding, ultimate cry of LIBERTÉ! It is a great joy to perform this sort of music with my Swedish Radio Choir. The ensemble is a very strong group, and most eager to stretch its boundaries. The strength of the group is not merely the sum of its individual qualities. At the moment when these qualities merge into one, the group develops still further, and the ensemble attains a higher elevation. However important blending of the sound may be, it may not be at the expense of individual colour and personality. Choirs are frequently recorded from a considerable distance, perhaps to improve the blend. I often find the resulting sound to be distant, and detrimental to the clarity of the text.

The recording technique of Channel Classics seeks to establish a synthesis, combining directness and clarity with spatial effect. This is exactly my own approach to choral timbre: the choir must achieve the greatest unity and blend, but also allow space for individual colour. It is at such moments that the listener feels personally involved, and the music gains a human aspect. I am convinced that this is the sound Poulenc had in mind when he wrote Figure humaine. Peter Dijkstra

Swedish contemporary composer Anders Eliasson’s music is guaranteed to captivate with its unique sound. Quo Vadis, written for tenor, choir and large orchestra, can be best described as a ‘symphonic cantata’ and is performed by the Swedish tenor Michael Weinius, the Swedish Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra under Johannes Gustavsson.

Celebrating 80 years of vigorous artistic life with Brahms’ expansive and consoling mass for the dead, Ein deutsches Requiem, the hr-Sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra) under its Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi, is joined by soprano Natalie Dessay, baritone Ludovic Tézier and the Swedish Radio Choir in an interpretation described as “exemplary” by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.