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Music for Holy Week
Holy Week - in which Christians mark the final climactic days of the life of Jesus - has always drawn from composers some of their most emotionally powerful music. As the Passion narrative moves from the fleeting triumph of Palm Sunday into the sudden despair of Good Friday and looks towards the Resurrection, text and music combine to re-trace a true psychological rollercoaster.
Over the centuries, the impact and appeal of this story has spread well beyond the bounds of conventional Christianity, and many more recent works combine the traditional Passion narrative with texts that view it from other angles.
This year, among the newly-released recordings of music for Holy Week are contemporary Passions from Denmark and Slovenia, operatic and sacred solo vocal recitals from Joseph Calleja and Barnaby Smith, instrumental meditations by Haydn and Biber, and hugely contrasting works of early choral polyphony by Gesualdo and Willaert.
Bent Sørensen's new St Matthew Passion, with an approachable English-language libretto drawing together not just Matthew's account of the Crucifixion but elements of the Gospel of John, the Mass text, and interwoven poetry, is an atmospheric and at times fragmentary-sounding work - its opening and closing movements explicitly evoke the idea of emerging from, and vanishing back into, the mist. Like many contemporary Requiems, it expands the scope of what a Passion can mean by embracing humanistic elements in addition to a religious core.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Christopher Tyler Nickel's vast project to set the entirety of the Gospel of Mark - a modest fifteen thousand words, clocking in at seven hours of music - eschews the individual casting and tutti crowds that many Passions use. Nickel is at pains to keep the focus on the text, rather than creating a quasi-operatic drama - all four vocalists are Evangelists, narrating the story clearly and uncomplicatedly, with the orchestra as an illustrative palette around them.
Available Formats: 7 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The anguished harmonies of Gesualdo - one of the most adventurous composers of the Renaissance - hardly needs any introduction. And it doesn't stop at his secular madrigals; his music for Holy Week is similarly emotionally fraught. Les Arts Florissants here perform the Responsories for Maundy Thursday - capturing the increasingly grief-stricken nature of the music as events move towards the Crucifixion, though never letting their performance stray into self-indulgence. It's hard to imagine the impact this music would have had on listeners in Gesualdo's time, but even today it retains its power to shock and unsettle by continually subverting the ear's expectations.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Inevitably, Holy Week is a time when singers enjoy much of the spotlight at the expense of instrumentalists. Indeed, Haydn's Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross did itself eventually end up as a choral work, but it began life as an orchestral meditation. The composer's arrangement of it for string quartet is thus a curious blend of chamber intimacy and religious outpouring - and there is nobody better-placed than the London Haydn Quartet to explore that unique combination.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'
Christiane Karg (soprano), Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano), Prague Philharmonic Choir, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Semyon Bychkov
Hardly a work of conventional Christian theology, Mahler's Resurrection symphony nevertheless draws much of its emotional power from a spiritual wrestling with the prospect of death and what might come after. Christiane Karg's O Röschen rot is spine-tingling, and the uplifting optimism of the conclusion is surely one of the most moving endings to any work in the repertoire. The Prague Philharmonic Choir's rousing call to resurrection is up there with the best of them.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Maltese tenor explores the sacred side of opera in this recital, with well-loved songs both from operas and from operatically-conceived sacred works. The Domine Deus from Rossini's Petite messe solennelle is a test of any tenor's mettle, and Calleja's performance of it is thrilling. An unexpected gem is a setting by Bocelli - yes, that Bocelli - of the Ave Maria, in which Calleja joins forces with violinist Daniel Hope.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Initially conceived as a private musical meditation on the life of Jesus, Biber's virtuosic and technically demanding Rosary Sonatas also allow violinists ample to scope to strut their stuff - as Amandine Beyer certainly does here. The dance-suite ancestry of the sonatas inspired a staged version in which Beyer and Gli Incogniti collaborated with a dance company to dramatise the music - and that lightness of approach very much carries over onto this recording.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
In keeping with his deep interest in Gregorian chant (which is very much to the fore here), Slovenian composer Damijan Močnik's St John Passion has a Latin text - siding with the sense of ritualistic solemnity it helps to create, rather than the immediacy of the vernacular. Močnik's other main wellspring of inspiration is folk music - something he has intentionally downplayed in this Passion setting, but which is still distinctly audible throughout.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
For those who consider even Bach to be a little too contemporary for their tastes, the St John Passion of Adriaen Willaert (composed around 1545) might just fit the bill. The polyphony is simple and clear - certainly less luxuriant than some other works from the man widely credited with the founding of Venetian polychoralism - allowing the narrative to take centre stage. Vocal ensemble Dionysos Now! complement their world-premiere recording of the Passion with a selection of Willaert's Lenten motets. This is a wonderful rediscovery, and Dionysos Now! give Willaert's innovative musical dramatisation of the Passion the graceful, fluid performance it deserves.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This EP, comprising three orchestral songs by Richard Harvey, ranges from atmospheric stillness to desolate emptiness, finally bursting into sudden, rushing life for the final song of the triptych - a setting of George Herbert's Rise, Heart that rivals Vaughan Williams's in its ecstatic joy. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir's sound is as magnificent as always, complemented by a small string ensemble and all elevated by the incredible, ethereal resonance of Estonia's Haapsalu Cathedral.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Barnaby Smith: Bach
Barnaby Smith (counter-tenor), The Illyria Consort, Leo Duarte (oboe), Bojan Čičić (violin), Katie Jeffries-Harris, Reiko Ichise, Steven Devine
Already familiar to many people as the Artistic Director of acclaimed vocal group Voces8, Barnaby Smith here branches out with a solo album of Bach. The gorgeous cantata BWV82 Ich habe genug is often the preserve of high basses, but Smith stakes a convincing claim to it as belonging equally to altos - as well as underlining its similarity to Erbarme dich from the St Matthew Passion. His approach to both this cantata and BWV170 (Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust) is on the relaxed side, but that's no bad thing in such lyrical music.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Haydn: Stabat Mater
Birgitte Christensen, Kristina Hammarström, Steve Davislim, Christian Immler, Zürcher Sing-Akademie, Kammerorchester Basel, René Jacobs
The ancient Latin hymn that forms the text of the Stabat Mater centres the emotional suffering of Jesus's mother at the foot of the Cross - and not surprisingly many composers have been drawn to its mix of drama and pathos. René Jacobs here performs the 1803 version of Haydn's dramatic Stabat Mater (originally from 1767), in which expanded wind orchestration adds extra colour to the musical canvas.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Taking as its starting-point the cry of desperation that is Psalm 130 ("Out of the deep have I called to thee, O Lord"), this exploratory album from soprano Sarah Traubel and countertenor Andreas Scholl juxtaposes works by Bach with the Expressionism of Berg and Schoenberg, all bound together by the thread of the psalmist's appeal for mercy in times of distress.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Sword in the Soul
London Choral Sinfonia, James Orford, Brian O'Kane, Samantha Bond (narrator), Simon Callow (narrator), Adrian Peacock (narrator), Samuel Pantcheff, Alison Ponsford-Hill, Michael Waldron
Composed and broadcast in 1991, but lost in a dusty organ loft for several decades before being revived by Michael Waldron, Francis Grier's Sword in the Soul is in many ways a contemporary answer to the Stabat Mater. Interspersed between the musical movements - at times poignant, at times searingly furious at injustice, with the London Choral Sinfonia consistently stellar through it all - are a series of moving and at times challenging readings by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
David Smith - Head of Digital
