Bernstein/Copland Choral works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein
Label: EMI
Magazine Review Date: 10/1991
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 60
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 754188-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Chichester Psalms |
Leonard Bernstein, Composer
King's College Choir, Cambridge Leonard Bernstein, Composer Stephen Cleobury, Conductor |
In the Beginning |
Aaron Copland, Composer
Aaron Copland, Composer King's College Choir, Cambridge Stephen Cleobury, Conductor |
Composer or Director: Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein
Label: EMI
Magazine Review Date: 10/1991
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: EL754188-4
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Chichester Psalms |
Leonard Bernstein, Composer
King's College Choir, Cambridge Leonard Bernstein, Composer Stephen Cleobury, Conductor |
In the Beginning |
Aaron Copland, Composer
Aaron Copland, Composer King's College Choir, Cambridge Stephen Cleobury, Conductor |
Author: Peter Dickinson
William Schuman's Carols of Death are three settings of Whitman, showing some of the same mystical qualities as Vaughan Williams and Holst who worked with some of the same portions of the text. Utterly fitting, both the composer's response and the King's performance. Copland's In the Beginning is a classic of unaccompanied choral cycles in English. The boys' voices are unusual here, but admirably controlled, even if Ameral Gunson is a slightly operatic soloist for the subject. I tend to prefer the cooler sound of Catherine Denley with the Corydon Singers under Matthew Best on Hyperion although the contrast between Gunson and the boys adds a dimension. The climax of In the Beginning is exhilarating.
Libby Larsen, a pupil of Argento, and co-founder of the Minnesota Composers' Forum in Minneapolis, wrote How it thrills us specially for the King's Choir last year. The piece uses carefully imagined pictorial effects in a setting of a translation of Rilke. Bernstein's Chichester Psalms was a British commission and is now one of the composer's most frequently heard non-theatrical works. Non-theatrical? Hardly, even in this version with accompaniment for organ, harp and percussion, which lacks some of the bite of the fuller scoring, but has other qualities, especially in the King's acoustic. Michael Pearce's solo (Track 2) is touching (and better in tune than the boy alto in Bernstein's original CBS recording), and the catchy sustained melody in five time which forms the last movement is rapturous, although the long phrases at 5'30'' seem to be intended for a single span rather than broken up. Bernstein does them continuously and in general, of course, is more operatic. But there are many ways of coping convincingly with the stylistic range from cathedral to Broadway even if Stephen Cleobury brings a little more English reserve than the charismatic maestro might have intended.'
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