The cover photograph, which I suspect will not be this disc’s
greatest selling point, appears to make reference to the first
performance of Górecki’s Totus Tuus in Warsaw during
a Mass celebrated by John Paul II. In fact, there is rather
more to it than that, as the French company Editions Jade publishes
only sacred music “with the conviction that if God did not exist
man would not sing”. No recording date is given, but it was
probably 1997. The booklet is a mess. Information about the
composers and performers has not all been translated from the
French, the sung texts are scrappily presented, and Jade would
have us believe that Górecki and Schnittke are still alive.
Totus Tuus is a serene meditation addressed to the Virgin.
The composer indicates a duration of ten to eleven minutes,
but this performance stretches it further, and in spite of the
undeniable concentration of the performers, I don’t think it
works. The score’s copious expression markings are difficult
to interpret and can seem contradictory, but it is clear that
the work is to be sung very slowly indeed. The final passage
contains no fewer than six exhortations to slow down still further,
so if the tempo is very slow to start with things get dangerously
sticky by the end. And if the conductor indulges from time is
some affectionate phrasing he is in real danger of testing the
listener’s patience. For some this work is an intensely moving
experience, devotion translated into music, whereas others find
it empty, saccharine, and with too few ideas stretched out for
far too long. I can understand both points of view, but a performance
such as this one certainly encourages the former. On a disc
I reviewed some time ago the Dutch choir Cantatrix dispatched
the work in a little over eight and half minutes, rather missing
the point (Aliud ACDHN 034w-2). This performance goes too far
in the other direction.
The conductor allows himself a little interpretative freedom
in the first of Pärt’s masterly Seven Magnificat Antiphons
too, bringing a strangely foreign, Romantic spirit to the music.
It is not unattractive. This choir’s marvellous basses are in
their element in the second piece, “O Adonai”, and the acoustic
comes to their aid too. Riga Cathedral is a fabulous building,
but the reverberation time must be a nightmare for a recording
engineer. In this second piece it adds to the atmosphere, but
it is certainly not the case in the following two pieces, especially
the fourth, “O Schlüssel Davids” where the crucial silences
are filled with echo. In the fifth piece the reverberation undermines
the composer’s decision to allot four sharps to two of the voices,
but none at all to the other two, with the listener left wondering
how much of the strange resulting harmony is actually intentional.
I think the choir sings with considerable accuracy here, but
the tuning is not always absolutely spot-on elsewhere, with
some shaky opening chords and the key relation between the two
final pieces more than a little strange. But this is a fine
performance overall, and one to which I will certainly return.
The Lithuanian Mikalojus čurlionis was a distinguished
painter as well as a composer. I don’t know if the two pieces
performed here come from a complete Mass setting, but the Carus
publication Musica Sacra Baltica contains a Gloria
by him, so it may well be the case. That piece begins with the
same kind of sub-Bach imitative writing with which the Kyrie
also opens, and though there is more than a whiff of counterpoint
textbook, there is undeniable grandeur nearer the end. The “Hosannas”
in Sanctus, too, lift the music well above its rather
humble beginning.
Polish composer Wojciech Kilar uses only the two words “Agnus
Dei”, setting them as a repeated, rocking chant in the men’s
voices below a wordless vocalise in the women’s voices. It evokes
a strongly devotional atmosphere, but one finds nothing new
in it after three or four hearings. Ave Verum Corpus
by Latvian composer Imant Ramins is another matter. After repeated
hearings one is less disturbed by the harmonic gear changes,
and the piece is revealed for what it truly is, a rapt and beautiful
setting of this ubiquitous text.
I am a great admirer of the music of Peteris Vasks, and am therefore
disappointed to say that his Dona Nobis Pacem, the longest
piece of uninterrupted music in the collection, outstays its
welcome. The basic musical idea is haunting and attractive,
but it lacks the substance to sustain a work of this length.
This, and the final piece in the collection, are the only two
with organ accompaniment. Schnittke’s work is a setting of a
few lines from Psalm 47, the familiar words beginning
“O clap your hands”. This is generally interpreted as a joyful,
festive text, and so it is here, though Schnittke’s idea of
joy is rather a peculiar one.
Much of the music in this collection is compelling, and the
performances by the Latvian choir are very fine indeed, with
just the odd moment of suspect tuning. Collectors who know the
music might also find one or two of the conductor’s ideas rather
surprising. The acoustic of the marvellous building is certainly
a drawback on disc.
William Hedley
Versija Chamber Choir/Juris Vaivods and Raitis Grigalis; Aivars
Kalejs (organ) 
