Under Stefan Parkman the Danish National Radio Choir have established a reputation second to none. It is not just their ability to meet the most complex technical demands with consummate ease-and there is no shortage of those in this music. It's the wonderful musicianship and controlled emotional intensity that places their singing on a high pedestal to which very few choirs of similar size (75 singers for this recording) could begin to aspire. The only real flaw in the entire programme comes at the end of the lovely An den Baum Daphne where a boy soloist (from the Copenhagen Boys' Choir) wanders horribly sharp.
Parkman handles his singers as if they were a fully fledged symphony orchestra; which is not at all inappropriate in this programme by the supreme master of orchestral colour. Written the same year as Rachmaninov's The Bells, the Deutsche Motette occupies a very similar soundworld-even down to some remarkably similar musical ideas. From the heart of its 16 chorus parts a further seven are projected by solo voices emerging imperceptibly from the midst of a dense, luxuriant texture. It is as much these singers' skill (the Deutsche Motette has been called the most challenging tonal choral work ever written) as Strauss's deep understanding of the a cappella medium that prevents one noticing the absence of the kind of opulent orchestral colour which so enriches Rachmaninov's work. The depth of colour and range of emotions are every bit as extensive in these works as in the great orchestral tone-poems; indeed few orchestral tone-poems evoke dusk and sunset so vividly as ''Der Abend'', the first of the 1897 Zwei Gesange. There is a wonderfully luminous soundscape here; a combination of superb compositional skill, sensitive musical direction, superlative choral singing and a warm, full-bodied recording.'