State Choir Latvija & Maris Sirmais - Credo - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Ondine's third album devoted to the music of Lithuanian-American composer zibuokle Martinaityte (b. 1973) focuses on her music for unaccompanied chorus. On this album four of her works are performed by the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Klava.

Choral music has always been a constant thread throughout the compositional development of Rhona Clarke (b. 1958). The works on this album range over a thirty-year period and demonstrate the increasing individuality of her work, though rooted in the choral tradition of Ireland and Britain. Her chamber and instrumental works can reach out in far more extreme modernist styles. From the darkness of Ave Atque Vale to the sheer breathtaking beauty of Pie Jesu or Lullay, my Liking, Clarke shows herself here to be among the most effective, inspired and communicative choral composers of today. The album contains sacred works; from her Requiem which concentrates on the message of redemption and omits the judgmental sections, to Marian Anthems and three Christmas Carols; and also secular songs of love, loss and black comedy. The Latvian State Choir is the leading professional choir in the Baltic States, and is in high demand internationally having worked recently with the Concertgebouw and London Philharmonic Orchestras (among many) and has recorded for Naxos, Harmonia Mundi, Warner and other top labels. This is the choir's debut album for Métier.

The legendary conductor Neeme Järvi celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in the summer of 2022, in Tallinn, giving a series of concerts with his beloved Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. This album serves not just as a commemoration of those wonderful concerts, but also as a personal calling card for this remarkable musician. The concert overture Polonia, published in 1836, may well have been inspired by Wagner's encounters with defeated Polish nationalists in Leipzig in 1832. Wagner wrote several concert overtures during this period - whilst plans for his revolutionary operatic output were developing - including Christoph Columbus and Rule Britannia!! Max Reger composed the Serenade in G major in 1905 - 06; it demonstrates the style and talent of this too-little-heard composer. Brahms set Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, in two movements with chorus, but then added a third, an orchestral postlude. Ave verum corpus, possibly Mozart's best-known setting for chorus, rounds off the program.