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This is a fine programme for Howells fans, eschewing the 'Coll. Reg.' canticles and the organ works, and including the lesser-heard Salve Regina and the Hymn for St Ceciliaas well as the 'Gloucester' canticles. The Requiem itself, like the other unaccompanied pieces here, is recorded in the gorgeous reverberation of the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral. Those works with organ are done at Lincoln...
Will only male choirs do for Howells's sacred music? So previous commentators have insisted, though only the most rigid epigone would say the same for the cantatas of Bach. By the same token, well-enunciated American English isn't out of place, especially when Massachusetts-based Gloriae Dei Cantores sing a work written for Washington National Cathedral - a late and unfinished Te Deum, at that,...
I was completely befuddled by the first words on the booklet cover: 'Half Monk' and 'Half Rascal'. Initially I thought of them as a couple of Scandinavian participants in the recording, and it was only when reading Claus Johansen (probably also Scandinavian) on the music itself that I came across Poulenc's remark that 'A critic has said that there are both a monk and a street urchin in me. That...
Layton and the DNVE follow Praulins with Poulenc
The Danish National Vocal Ensemble face some pretty stiff competition with this disc of unaccompanied Poulenc but they do not just hold their own; they sweep a lot of it aside. Under Stephen Layton's perceptive and often inspired direction, they capture the essential dichotomy of Poulenc's writing as encapsulated in the title of the disc, a...
“A critic said that there is both a monk and a street urchin in me. That is an accurate description of my personality”. Poulenc was the first to admit the contradictions inherent in his music and character. A devout Catholic, he was openly gay, and his music can miraculously reconcile the deeply personal with the cheekily flippant. Close your ears to Poulenc and you’re missing out on some of the...
No one is pretending Poulenc's melodies and instrumental music are without their performing problems. But, rather curiously, he left many of his most fearsome challenges for his choral music: in phrasing, balance, articulation, register and, above all, tuning. For every piece that sits comfortably in a model armchair, there's another that stuns with chromatic leaps and bounds- and often the two...