Cappella Pratensis - Apostola Apostolorum - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Cappella Pratensis has been building an impressive discography at Challenge Classics. Their previous releases include Ockeghem's Requiem (CC 72541), Desprez's Missa Ave Maris Stella (CC 72632) and the three first volumes of Den Bosch Choirbook (CC 72877, 72878, 72879). All these records have received a wide critical acclaim and specialized media awards. Their latest (CC 72879, Apostola apostolorum) has also been awarded the REMA biannual prize which is given by a jury of early music specialists. So, it is not by surprise that now they confront one of the highest peaks of Renaissance polyphony Jacob Obrecht's Missa Maria zart. And once more Cappella Pratensis, under the guide of Stratton Bull, achieve highest standards, setting a new reference account for this polyphonic masterpiece.

The Belgian pianist Thérèse Malengreau has a particular interest in the relationship between music and the visual arts. With her first on BIS she offers us a rare opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the music of Hans Erich Apostel, banned as 'degenerate' by the Nazis in 1938, and a rarity in performance ever since. At the same time, her album allows us insight into the interplay between composers and artists in other disciplines during the first decades of the twentieth century, in the context of movements such as Der Blaue Reiter, the arts magazine Der Sturm or the Vienna Workshop. The three works here were inspired by artwork by Otto Kokoschka and Alfred Kubin, two of them appearing on album for the first time. In his Op. 1, the Zehn Variationen, Apostel translates 10 drawings by Kokoschka into sounds - but as Malengreau suggests in her own liner notes, what the music describes is the varying degrees of expressivity and intensity of the drawings, rather than the images themselves. The closing work consists of 60 very brief sketches (less than 40 seconds on average), in which Apostel is reacting to Kubin's drawings (caricatures rather than portraits) of nuns and witches, generals or huntsmen. Apostel completed it in 1948-49, but as early as 1945 it provided material for what is probably his best-known work the ten pieces that make up the 15-minute long Kubiniana.

Cappella Records proudly announces the of Robert Kyr's All-Night Vigil, performed by Cappella Romana, directed by founder and music director Alexander Lingas. Robert Kyr's All-Night Vigil takes it's formal inspiration from Sergei Rachmaninoff, who in 1915 set the same 15 selections from the Orthodox vigil for the Resurrection. Here Robert Kyr employs an English translation of those selections by the late Archmandrite Ephrem (Lash), to whom this Vigil is dedicated. Kyr blends Byzantine and Slavic musical traditions with a distinctly personal idiom, granting a fresh approach for those familiar with these texts, and a deeply moving point of entry for those encountering them for the first time. Classical Net on Cappella Romana's 2014 recording of Robert Kyr's A Time For Life InchThere is perhaps no choir that can sing this kind of music more beautifully than Cappella Romana... singing with real emotion and depth... which requires no religion to enjoy, but only heart and soul.Inch Vocal ensemble Cappella Romana combines passion with scholarship in it's exploration of early and contemporary music of the Christian East and West, embracing Rome and Western Europe as well as the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople (InchNew RomeInch) and it's Slavic commonwealth.