Reviews
Review Search
Polyphony and Hyperion Records have done more to broaden our choral taste than any other choir or record company in this country. After excellent recent surveys of Gabriel Jackson, Morten Lauridsen, Paweł Łukaszewski and Eric Whitacre, the second `greatest choir in the world` (according to Gramophone) has released a disc of music by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds. Unlike the diaphanous...
Ešenvalds responds to the purpose of the words he sets, occupying similar choral territory to the likes of Whitacre and Shchedrin, character rather than ego dominating … Ešenvalds favours the upper voices, giving them luminous, floating melodies against backgrounds that set them in shimmering relief or throw mysterious, penumbrous cloaks around them. Polyphony typically balances beauty of timbre...
In den drei Republiken des Baltikum gab es immer schon eine ausgeprägt hochklassige und vielfältige Musikszene, die nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion wieder richtig aufblühte. Nun, rund 20 Jahre danach, ist sie zu einem bedeutenden Faktor in der europäischen Szene der zeitgenössischen Musik (sowohl im Jazz, als auch in der zeitgenössischen klassischen Musik) geworden. Zahlreiche Komponisten...
De revolutie van 1991 in Letland is de geschiedenis ingegaan als de ‘zingende revolutie’. Duizenden Letten verzamelden zich om liederen te zingen die door de communistische machthebbers verboden waren. Eriks Esenwalds was viertien jaar en hij was er bij. Hij zong zich vrij.Een componist die aan het begin van zijn studie alle deuren ziet opengaan, zal nieuwe indrukken als een spons opzuigen. En...
A "singing revolution" of vocal magic from Polyphony, Stephen Layton and Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds.
The Latvian struggle for independence from the Soviet Union has been dubbed the “Singing Revolution”, in which freedom fighters raised their voices in a chorus of forbidden songs.
Australian concert-goers have sampled the mesmerising choral sound of the Baltic as championed by Stephen Layton...
Eriks Esenvalds (b. 1977) is a Latvian composer who, according to the notes, comes from a new Latvia free of all repressive Socialist Realism strictures. Yet his music is hardly avant-garde either, and his teachers have included Jonathan Harvey and Richard Danielpour, among others, in a very cosmopolitan set. But his music will inevitably remind any listener of Arvo Pärt or earlier John Taverner...