MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 
REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: Crotchet

Ioannis KOUKOUZÉLIS
Byzantine Chant
Then he shall speak to them in his anger [8.15]
He shall grind his teeth and pine away [6.20]
Strengthen, O most glorious, the town that magnifies you. O Dimitrios [18.16]
Bless the Lord, O Choir of Archangels [7.00]
Kratime [32.58]
Choeur Byzantine de Grèce/Lycourgas Angelopoulos
rec. L’Eglise Saint-Blaise du Plan de Pées; no date given but disc originally released 1995
JADE 399 299-2 [73.08]

Experience Classicsonline


For the more beady-eyed of you, you will notice that the birth and death dates of this so-called ‘Maistor Byzantin’ are not given. That is because, as the booklet notes eventually get round to telling us, no-one is quite certain if Koukouzélis lived in the 9th Century or much, much later. In fact to quote the notes by Lycourgas Angelopoulos who is the head of the Byzantine Chorus of Greece and an expert on Byzantine music “... many of them (researchers) now think that the peak of his production occurred in the early 14th Century.” Later we are told that another researcher believes that the composer “lived much earlier” and that he was really ‘Grigoris the Domestic (church singer) and who lived at Grat Lavranon Mount Athos”; in which case the date of 884 is offered for one of his manuscripts. It seems more likely to me that he may have lived in the mid-11th Century. It was at that time that the individual cells of the hermits were subordinated to the larger foundation of Athos which coincided with the development of the liturgy.

The beautiful booklet cover has a figure, could it be Christ haloed in gold, or could it be Koukouzélis who is celebrated in the Orthodox Church on 1 October? In fact it is Christ who is represented in an image found in a wonderful mosaic in the Monastery d’Iveron on Mount Athos. In the Byzantine empire only the Holy Mountain of Athos has had its form and spirit conserved as I found out when I stayed there as a pilgrim in 2000. There I heard for myself rhythmic and tuneful chanting, sometimes with melodies surging high, too high for many of the monks and sometimes deep in the soles of their boots so that all text is lost in a grumble of quavers. That is what you can still experience when listening to this professionally recorded CD.

What we are told is that Koukouzélis was Bulgarian, the father of his country’s music. Yet that may not be the case. First there is only one Bulgarian monastery on Athos; most being Greek. In addition his work may be confused with that of other composers such as Glykeotis Dyssikos and one Argyropoulos. Koukouzélis was probably Greek. So, in much confusion, I turned to the chant itself with the help of the rather technical booklet notes. Sadly, these throw little light on the background but offer the texts - perhaps a little curtailed. There’s also an uncompromising analysis of the modes, both melodic and rhythmic. But we are not here judging music or even, I thought at first, its performance. Then again the Choeur Byzantine is a smart outfit, founded as long ago as 1977. They sing in a way that is acceptable more to the CD market. They are well rehearsed, are more homogeneous in sound quality than the monks and there are, probably, more of them - fifteen listed - yet for the monks the chant is all part and parcel of the ancient liturgy which can be heard day in day out all hours from its twenty monasteries. Although I stayed at d’Iveron the most impressive is in many ways Xenophon which is well worth viewing from the sea and one of the small fishing boats.

But I digress: let’s take for example track 3, the piece in honour of St. Dimitrios, “of renown glory”. It uses a poem of Bishop Anatolios, one of the early fathers. In track 4 the text paraphrases Psalm 134 and belongs to the so-called Latrinos Plyeleos for major feast days - in this case for the Archangels. The booklet gives the text and then proceeds: “The first (unit) develops mainly in the 1st mode éso, ending typically on its pentaphony (before the word Leghe) with short occurrences in the 4th mode’s plagal of the grave mode (Varis) and on the 4th mode. The second unit begins: …” I’m not sure how helpful all this is for each piece.

The longest piece is the final track ‘Kratime’ which weighs in at a stamina-sapping thirty-two minutes. It is certainly a striking composition which was written “as for a Choir”. No text is offered for this, but there is a guide, as above, to its modal construction. Speaking of texts, not all, as I have indicated, are given and I make no apologies for giving you, in the header, the titles in English. The CD box only gives them in French. Even so, the essay is well translated.

The recording, which is excellent, with a sense of ecclesiastical space and air without being distant was I think made, unless someone tells me otherwise, at a church in south eastern France. It is one of an enterprising series of four CDs. The others are advertised in the inside case, of Byzantine Chant made under the direction of Lycourgos Angelopoulos. 

Gary Higginson 

 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.