Cantatrix, if one interprets the insert note correctly, is
a choir of amateur singers which regularly fulfils professional
engagements, both at home in the Netherlands and abroad. The
list of members contains twenty-nine names. This is the choir’s
first recording.
The pages of Górecki’s Totus Tuus are peppered with expression
marks leaving no doubt that the piece is to be sung mainly very
quietly and very slowly. The music is repetitive, and the conductor
may worry lest the audience become restive, but on a good day
the intensity and devotional quality of the piece can be maintained
right up to the two bars of silence, the second with a pause
mark over it, that the composer has placed at the end. In this
performance the quiet passages are consistently a notch or two
above what is demanded, and the tempi too. The Holst Singers
and Stephen Layton, on Hyperion, add almost two and a half minutes
to Cantatrix’s timing, and it shows.
Of the three pieces by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (not
Mäntyjärvy as printed in the booklet) the Ave Maria features
free chanting and whispering of the text, long-held hummed notes
and parallel chords. His setting of Shakespeare’s famous song
does not, to my ears, even begin to live up to the demands of
the words. I was glad is another matter. The composer has found
appropriate music for these passages from Psalm 122, and if
traditional listeners are surprised that it’s nothing like Parry,
well, why would it be? The pronunciation of the text, whilst
acceptable, betrays the fact that the singers are not native
English speakers.
Górecki, Mäntyjärvi, Lauridsen and Whitacre all belong to that
unofficial school of composers who bring pleasure to professional
and amateur choral singers by way of approachable and singable
music which nonetheless remains recognisably modern. Let us
now add to the list the name of Dutch composer Coen Vermeeren.
His website reveals him to be a composer of mainly sacred choral
music, but Keanskes Lêste liet (“Keanske’s Last Song”) is written
to a secular text in the Frisian language by Gerrit Breteler.
The work is extremely well written for the choir, coping well
at one point with some dangerous onomatopoeia – bell sounds
– and featuring rather more in the way of harmonic surprises
than is often the case in this “unofficial school”.
The actual sound of Morten Lauridsen’s music is so beautiful
that one sometimes feels manipulated by it. He has a sure understanding
of the right moment to add a crescendo or fortissimo too, so
that even when the head complains that this is altogether too
sweet for comfort, the heart tends to overrule it. La Rose complète
and Dirait-on are the last two songs in a cycle of five entitled
Les Chansons des Roses. In the complete work only the fifth
song is accompanied, the piano stealing in on the last chord
of the fourth song; the final one then following without a break.
This is nerve-wracking for the conductor: pitch only needs to
have sunk by a quarter of a tone for it to be audible. Cantatrix
do not attempt that here. All three Lauridsen pieces are absolutely
gorgeous, and the soft-toned writing seems particularly suited
to this choir, making these some of the finest performances
on the disc. The conductor has chosen a very rapid tempo for
Dirait-on though, transforming it into something other than
what we are used to.
Elgar’s part songs sit uneasily in this company. He needed
a larger canvas on which to spread his thoughts, and these
works are difficult to bring off. In My Love Dwelt in a
Northern Land, a less consistently emphatic push on the first
beat of the repeated rhythmic cell would have helped give the
performance a more idiomatic feel, and though Go, song of Mine
begins well, the choir does not sound fully at ease thereafter,
and the final, single word, “Go” is sung as if the choir doesn’t
quite believe in it.
Gorgeous is again a word which comes to mind in connection with
the music of Eric Whitacre, and though both of the pieces on
this disc have gained wide currency, I find them less compelling
than the rest of the programme. One lush, multi-voiced chord
follows another, creating lots of atmosphere, but repeated hearing
doesn’t reveal much more than this. Neither is there much in
the way of melodic writing in either of the works given here.
The programme ends with a choral favourite. Franz Biebl’s Ave
Maria exists in various forms. Here, the composer demonstrates
his skill at contrasting and combining the men’s and the upper
voices. The opening chorus is heard three times, which is pushing
it a bit, lovely though it is. It is preceded each time by a
short passage of chant from a soloist, not universally well
taken here, and the first soloist and the choir are not at all
in agreement in respect of pitch. Overall, though, these performances
are very fine; occasional (and minimal) tuning problems – in
the Mäntyjärvi pieces, for example – and a certain passing “whiteness”
of tone are among the few factors that would lead a listener
to suspect that these were not professional singers.
The recording, which I have heard only in normal stereo, is
atmospheric but close, allowing a few creaks and page turns
to be heard. Sibilants are sometimes over-audible. The booklet
prints the texts in English or Latin, and the Vermeeren is given
in the original language with an English translation. The notes,
in three languages, are skimpy and the whole could have been
better proofread. One reads that the programme is very varied,
hence the CD’s title, but in fact there is not much in the way
of variety here, and it may have been unwise to launch the choir’s
recording career with a recital programme consisting of so many
short works by so many different composers, and in the case
of Lauridsen, extracts from larger works which are already available
from very accomplished choirs indeed. Nonetheless, Cantatrix
is clearly one of the very finest amateur choirs around, and
if the programme appeals the disc will bring much pleasure.
William Hedley
Cantatrix/Geert-Jan van Beijeren Bergen en Henegouwen; Noriko Yabe (piano)*
[65:34]
