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: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Aleksandr Tikhonovich GRECHANINOV (1864-1956)
Now the Powers of Heaven, Op 58 No 6 [5:20]
In Thy Kingdom, Op 58 No 3* [7:29]
Lord, now lettest Thou Thy Servant, Op 34 No 1 [2:32]
All-Night Vigil, Op 59 (Vsenoshchnoye bdeniye) ('Vespers') (1912) [47:12]
Holst Singers/Stephen Layton
* James Bowman (counter-tenor)
rec. 8, 9, 15 November 1998, The Temple Church, London.
HYPERION HELIOS CDH55353 [63:16]

Experience Classicsonline


I remember vividly the first time I heard Grechaninov’s liturgical music. That was back in 1994 when Chandos issued their superb recording of the Seven Days of Passion. The opening track floored me and to this day I know of no more beautiful and impressive sound as sound per se than a fine echt Russian choir in full voice. Somehow this remarkable disc, first issued on Hyperion passed me by; its re-release on their budget label, Helios is very welcome. It could alert collectors to the hitherto unknown glories of a Russian orthodox choral tradition which dates back little more than a hundred years but has its roots in chants centuries old.

As a prelude to the main work, we are given three other pieces: two motets and a responsorial canticle, the latter featuring counter-tenor James Bowman, who has long been involved as a solo performer with the Holst Singers. His role here requires him to sing within a range of no more than five notes but he does so expressively.

If you are already familiar with, and love, the sonorous incantation of Rachmaninov’s so-called “Vespers”, this disc is definitely for you. Regardless of the specific qualities of the music, just the sound of the choir here is sufficient to transport me into a spiritual dimension redolent of bejewelled icons, smoky tapers and the practice of unshakable faith through centuries of tumult and oppression. This may be a Romantic fantasy, but the music itself consistently reaches heavenward. The most striking aspect of the scoring in this work is the frequency with which the basses are required to sustain an ostinato underpinning the great blocks of four-part choral writing. These features in combination with the glorious harmonic melismata and soaring sopranos of exceptional purity and homogeneity create one of the most evocative and distinctive musical idioms I know. The music spans four octaves, from an incredible repeated low A from the basses to the plangent top line and rarely strays from noble major keys, creating a sense of luminosity. Sample the sustained low Bs at the end of track 2 and the low A which concludes track 12, and ask yourself if the choir in question can really be English and ostensibly amateur – yet it is; the first I have heard to match the choirs under Sveshnikov in the famous 1965 recording of the Rachmaninov “Vespers” or the Novospassky Monastery Choir in a superb 1994 “Russian Chant for Vespers” disc on Naxos. The Holst Singers are the most authentically non-Russian, Russian–sounding choir I have ever heard – and their Russian pronunciation sounds excellent, too.

The highlight of this disc is track 12; a grand, complex, multi-voiced hymn of praise in which choral recitative alternates with solo fragments in the style of a liturgical reading. The next, final track, Vzbrannoy voyevode, brings the work to a fitting, climactic conclusion by imitating the swinging of great bells in hymning the Mother of God. There is a kind of monumental simplicity to Grechaninov’s stately melodies; the work is a paradigm of 19th Century Russian polyphony.

It was Tchaikovsky who first introduced a choral cycle for the Vigil in 1881. The first performance of Grechaninov’s “Vespers” in 1912 predates Rachmaninov’s celebrated version by three years yet it soon declined into desuetude and was not performed again in modern times until 1995 in the United States. Despite the relatively few texts set and its comparative brevity at 47 minutes – possibly an indication that the composer envisaged performance of his music in concert more than as integral to liturgical worship - it creates a sense of massive assurance as it weaves fragments of traditional chant into richly textured waves of sound. Given that it offers Grechaninov’s individuality of style but also many of the virtues of Rachmaninov’s - admittedly more substantial - version, it deserves to be far better known.

This is a bargain issue but full notes and texts are provided.

Ralph Moore


 

 

 

 


 


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.