SWR Vokalensemble - Bortniansky, Schnittke & Vedel: Choir Concerto - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Christian moved to Italy and then, finally, to London, where, like Handel before him, he won early success in the opera house. Although he had been a skilled keyboard player, he wrote relatively little for the medium.

Rheinberger composed his Cantus Missae in 1878, during his tenure as court chapel master to King Ludwig II. The work bears witness to his successful reconciliation of the conflicting artistic currents of his time, and it is precisely this perfect equilibrium that has rendered it timeless. The Mass captivates with it's melodic, often almost Lied like character; yet, on closer listening, the music reveals a striking modernity for it's era.Nana Forte's Libera me was written almost 150 years after Cantus Missae. It is a spiritual drama in which the composer draws on the traditional techniques of double choir writing she let's the choirs interlock contrapuntally or overlap in contrasting layers, as in the passage Inchtremens factus sum egoInch (Inchtrembling has overtaken meInch).Frank Martin kept the manuscript of his Mass for Double Choir in a drawer for nearly forty years, regarding it as something solely between himself and God. In sound and musical language, the Mass is unmistakably a work of the twentieth century, yet one hears echoes of Gregorian chant and senses that the composer consciously places himself within the centuries old tradition of double choir composition and the symbolic world of Mass settings. Martin's work is shaped by the tension between tradition and modernity, personal confession and doctrinal expectation; but rather than seeking a Inchgolden mean,Inch he approaches these themes as a seeker and questioner. The result is one of the most highly regarded Mass settings of the twentieth century.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy composed a total of 38 songs for male voices a cappella between 1820 and 1847. He wrote many of them for his own use among family or friends. He also liked to use these secular choruses as gifts or personal thanksgiving. Now the male voices of the SWR Vokalensemble under the direction of Frieder Bernius have presented a recording of these songs. The result is an impressive testimony to these compositions, which are among the least explored parts of Mendelssohn's oeuvre.