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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Arvo Pärt: Creator Spiritus
Paul Hillier curates this collection of Arvo Pärt's instrumental and choral chamber music drawn from different periods in the composer's career. He brings together his celebrated vocal ensembles, along with chamber group NYYD, and long-time collaborator organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, to produce another powerful recording of ethereal sacred music. Theatre of Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen appear in Glasgow at the end of March performing 'Stimmung', 'The Little Match Girl Passion', Allegri and Terry Riley. “it's the "Stabat Mater" which impresses most, a sublime concord of voices and strings in Pärt's characteristic tintinnabulate flotation.” The Independent, 30th March 2012 ***** “It is no surprise that the virtuosic singers in Theatre of Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen are often to be found in early music ensembles...The NYYD Quartet and organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent add sonic variety to this pure, minimalist enterprise.” The Observer, 8th April 201 “Hillier and his colleagues are fully at ease with the slowness of undertow and sense of near-repose that the unfolding self-similarity creates in so many of the pieces here. And they rightly often glory in the glowing resonances they’re presented with. The patient, softly-contoured gentleness they bring to the start of The Deer’s Cry is mesmerising and makes the stresses of its later insistence – climax seems too strong a word – all the more effective.” Irish Times, 20th April 2012 ***** “Theatre of Voices have lived and breathed Part's music for over two decades but it is perhaps the warmth and beauty of the voices of Ars Nova Copenhagen that is most immediately striking here” Gramophone Magazine, June 2012 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | The Christmas Story
Inspired by the much-loved service of ‘Nine Lessons and Carols’ given every Christmas Eve, this recording presents the Nativity story told through plainchant, motets, 17th Century dialogues and traditional folk carols. Paul Hillier leads Theatre of Voice and Ars Nova Copenhagen in music he has culled and arranged from Italian, German, Danish, English and American sources. Their previous disc of music inspired by texts: Stories – Berio & Friends received rave reviews. “The 65 minutes are designed to be played at a single sitting: the musically curious – and those of genuine religious impulse – will find much that is deeply satisfying.” Mail on Sunday, 27th November 2011 “Tracing a course from Advent through the Nativity and on to Epiphany and Holy Innocents, Paul Hillier has devised a fascinating programme of plainchant, Renaissance music and other apt pieces that poignantly relate the Christmas narrative. Excellent performances bring the sequence vividly to life.” The Telegraph, 9th December 2011 “This lovely disc offers a Danish take on the traditional English carol service...This needs to be listened to in sequence, in one go, and following the texts leads to a pretty profound, immersive experience. Paul Hillier’s arrangements of traditional carols are unfailingly sensitive; the highlights being a radiant version of the Italian Dormi, dormi o bel Bambino and an account of Liebe Hirten” The Arts Desk, 10th December 2011 “As collections of Christmas music go, this one stands out, not only for the impeccably refined and expressive singing, but for the immense breadth of the material it contains...The highlight, for me, is Ars Nova’s beautifully shaped reading of Byrd’s O magnum mysterium.” Sunday Times, 18th December 2011 “Only one work from Carols for Choirs has made it into Paul Hillier's strikingly original Christmas sequence. Pungent arrangements of "Personent Hodie" and "Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen" jostle for space with ancient plainchant...Ars Nova's ripe choral sound outclasses the thready blend of Theatre of Voices.” The Independent on Sunday, 11th December 2011 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Stories - Berio and Friends
Paul Hillier leads Theatre of Voices in a fascinating programme centred on Luciano Berio: "Although not all these composers actually knew each other, I think of them as a group of mutual friends with shared interests and predilections. If there is a link between them it is perhaps the influence of John Cage, though it could almost equally have been the personality of Cathy Berberian. I’ve had the privilege of meeting them all except Berio. The largest work is Berio’s A-Ronne, which is for me an iconic example of the representative madrigal in modern dress. Mostly the pieces appear to tell a story – or stories – but avoid getting to the point. Two of them advance in straight lines by following the alphabet (A- Ronne, Stripsody), while others go round in circles, around and around." Paul Hillier “The standout work on this disc is Berio's A Ronne, an experimental yet consummate vocal ensemble piece, taking in a wide range of vocal techniques, while also exploring issues of language and meaning. The performances here are all first class. The Berio poses the greatest technical challenges, but all are executed with fluency and (apparent) ease. The balance and ensemble between the singers is always ideal, and the sound quality is great.” Classical Review, 19th June 2011 “The work I was most pleased to encounter...was Roger Marsh's Not a Soul But Ourselves...It builds - or disintegrates - beautifully from the verbal theatre of Joyce's text to a beautifully simple, and simply beautiful, extended coda. Altogether a remarkable disc, with perfect recording quality.” International Record Review, July/August 2011 “[these pieces] avoid the conventions of setting words to music, or writing music that presents and supports a text, and instead set out to make music directly out of words (and some other vocal sounds, too). Cage and Frank are the most direct. Berberian runs the gamut of cartoon bubble texts. Marsh turns to Finnegans Wake , and Mac Low to chance operations.” Irish Times, 6th May 2011 *** “A-Ronne might be their (secular) bible: a half-hour A-Z of experimentation, devised in 1974 as a radio documentary, but also seen by Luciano Berio as a kind of madrigal...the textural kaleidoscope is fascinating. John Cage’s Story (1940) makes its Gertrude Stein textlet very catchy. Roger Marsh’s Not a Soul but Ourselves (1977) is a vivid, endearing treatment of passages from Finnegans Wake, and Cathy Berberian’s Stripsody (1966) is very 1960s.” Sunday Times, 1st May 2011 *** “This is excellent, goofy stuff, from the Roy Lichtenstein-inspired artwork to the immaculate production – listen through headphones and you can almost recreate the missing theatrical, visual element to several of these pieces...Full credit due to Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices, audibly having fun but never hamming things up too much.” Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk, 4th June 2011 “The pieces demand that the performers are not only vocalists but actors too, and it is in this respect which the Theatre of Voices excel. All of the performers fully engage with the dramatic personas of the texts...There is a real sense of dialogue, and each individual captures a sense of wonderment in the exploration of the percussive capacities of vowel sounds and how they combine to form words.” The Cherwell, 27th May 2011 “Hillier's Theatre of Voices do the whole mélange proud – their version of Berberian's piece uses three voices whereas her original version was a solo – and the disc is worth acquiring for their wonderfully slick A-Ronne alone.” The Guardian, 28th April 2011 *** “Berio's A-Ronne collages together fragments of text from various sources representing the standard distinctions of beginning/middle/end, while Cage's Story deconstructs a short text by Gertrude Stein into rhythmic, fragmentary vocables. Sheldon Frank's As I Was Saying is a collation of the meaningless pause-phrases that punctuate normal speech: literally, like reading between the lines.” The Independent, 22nd April 2011 *** “Burps, sighs and coughs. Hisses, purrs and groans. Giggles, barks, polyglot whispers and the chaste-sexy shreds of madrigals and motets cast a spell in Theatre of Voices's performance of "A-ronne".” The Independent on Sunday, 8th May 2011 “Experiments in vocal sound is inspired by texts, graphic designs and exerts from conversation - with arresting results...Paul Hillier’s fearless vocal ensemble abandon conventionally notated music for a clamorous, diverting programme of 20th-century adventures in sound...Biggest and best is Luciano Berio’s magisterial A-Ronne, an epic tapestry of texts, alphabet letters, cries and whispers” The Times, 14th May 2011 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | David Lang - The Little Match Girl PassionRecording dates: October 29-November 1, 2008 Venue: Stavnsholt Kirke, Copenhagen, Denmark
"What drew me to The Little Match Girl is that the strength of the story lies not in its plot but in the fact that the horror and the beauty are constantly suffused with their opposites. Andersen tells this story as a kind of parable, drawing a religious and moral equivalency between the suffering of the poor girl and the suffering of Jesus." David Lang Co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall especially for Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices, David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Setting Hans Christian Andersen’s fable in the format of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Lang elevates the suffering of the little match girl with poignant, evocative music. Lang’s piece is scored for four voices and a few percussion instruments, played by the singers.They sing the sad story of a little girl who freezes to death, selling matches on the street during a cold winter’s night. In notes Lang wrote to accompany the Carnegie Hall première last October, he says he was drawn to Andersen’s story because of how opposite aspects of the plot played off each other. “The girl’s bitter present is locked together with the sweetness of her past memories,” Lang says.“Her poverty is always suffused with her hopefulness.There’s a kind of naïve equilibrium between suffering and hope.” David Lang is one of America's most performed composers. His recent works include writing on water for London Sinfonietta, with libretto and visuals by English filmmaker Peter Greenaway; the difficulty of crossing a field - a fully staged opera for the Kronos Quartet, staged by Carey Perloff and the American Conservatory Theater; loud love songs, a concerto for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie; and the oratorio Shelter, with co-composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, staged by Ridge Theater and featuring the Norwegian vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval. David Lang is currently on the composition faculties of both the Yale School of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He is also Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the New York music festival Bang on a Can. "I don't think I've ever been so moved by a new, and largely unheralded, composition as I was by David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion, which is unlike any music I know." Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize Juror “Lang's artistic voice and diction are very individual, but his writing is rich in subtle echoes… All the pieces haunt you long after the CD has ended.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2009 “…Lang looked towards Bach's St Matthew Passion as a model for setting Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tale… This performance is a triumph for Paul Hillier's quartet of solo SATB voices, who articulate faultlessly while doubling on a miscellany of tintinnabulating percussion.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2010 “Lang's retelling of Hans Andersen's fairy tale is an entrancingly beautiful piece...What makes it so compelling is the haunting vocal writing.” The Guardian, 4th September 2009 ***** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Paris, 1968: with the premiere of Stimmung, Stockhausen redefined the very notion of what vocal music is. This series of sonic sequences, entirely built on the overtones of B flat in multiple combinations, embraces new musical techniques and explores the inner world of speech and song. Paul Hillier, a specialist in contemporary vocal repertoire, proves in his new recording that this milestone of 20th-century music is still as relevant as ever. “A turning point for composer and contemporary music alike, Stimmung merges the serialist's rigour with the minimalist's empiricism. Barely tangible shifts between timbres, thythms, meters and words are core to this work's realisation. With their judgement and ingenuity, the recording engineers contrive to place us inside this remarkable sonic event.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 “In this new edition Hillier, who was a member of Singcircle when that group recorded its version for Hyperion in 1983 (CDA66115), has succeeded triumphantly in his aim of more accurately realising the effect of the piece in concert, rather than the sometimes disconcertingly in-your-ear close-mic immediacy of Singcircle's recording, superbly performed through it was. For once, surround-sound is more than a gimmick, since Stockhausen is one of the handful of composers in whose music placement and movement of sound is of the essence.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2007 ***** “Paul Hillier sang bass in the famous performances of Stockhausen's psychedelic Stimmung that Gregory Rose's Singcircle vocal troupe toured during the mid-1980s. Two decades on and Hillier's understanding of this unique piece might even be greater than the composer's own. He has objectivity on his side – a quality that Stockhausen himself squandered many moons ago.
Stimmung is structured around an electronically sustained drone that is sounded throughout the work's duration. Anchored around B flat, the drone contains the complex harmonic overtone series around which Stockhausen constructs his constantly generating sound world of rarefied timbres and ethereal melodies. He provides embryonic melodic cells and fragments of text, arranged in 51 'Models', leaving the singers to embellish this given material during the performance.
It's probably more accurate to say that Stimmung is 'realised' than 'performed'.
If this all sounds rather academic then the result is actually one of the most gorgeous vocal soundscapes in all 20th-century music. Hillier's Theatre of Voices operate at such a refined level of specialised technique that radically new expressive territory emerges. Standard vocal delivery feels superseded by loops of vocalised harmonics, tactile humming and, as the piece nears its conclusion, a catchy whistled refrain that calmly draws threads together. Stockhausen's flexi-notation blurs the supply and demand chain that usually defines composer and performer relationships.
The musicians are licensed to define the micro as they transform and deliberate over the material. They converse and explore, and an enigmatic piece-specific discipline is created. A thrilling and important performance.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “one of the most gorgeous vocal soundscapes in all 20th century music. A thrilling and important performance - possibly the CD highlight of 2007 so far.” Gramophone Magazine, 2007 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | The Cries of London
Theatre of Voices and Fretwork are heard in a selection of the Cries of London, in which music for viol consort is overlaid - sometimes comically, sometimes poignantly - with the raucous voices of 16th-century London's street-vendors, mendicants, tradesmen and river-taxis. "Theatre of Voices enters infectiously into the extrovert spirit of the pieces and Fretwork's elegantly expressive playing of Gibbons and Dering fantasias provides an effectively contrasted touch of sophistication." The Daily Telegraph | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Chapter 8 - Sacred Music Of The Renaissance (1500-1600)Includes works by Josquin, Janequin, Palestrina, Monteverdi & Tallis
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| |  | Arvo Pärt - A Tribute
"No living composer draws more meaning from key religious texts, and these particular performances honour ärt's
intentions with consummate musicianship." Gramophone | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Chapter 4 - Troubadours, Trouvères & Courtly Love (1100-1200)Music by Gautier de Coincy, Thibaud de Champagne, Adam de la Halle, Alfonso the Wise, et al.
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| |  | Chapter 5 - The Birth of Polyphony (1100-1300)
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Gramophone Magazine
BBC Music Magazine Awards 2008