Rachmaninov: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Latvian Radio Choir & Sigvards Klava

Cover Rachmaninov: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

Album Info

Album Veröffentlichung:
2010

HRA-Veröffentlichung:
26.03.2014

Label: Ondine

Genre: Classical

Subgenre: Choral

Interpret: Latvian Radio Choir & Sigvards Klava

Komponist: Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Das Album enthält Albumcover Booklet (PDF)

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FLAC 96 $ 15,00
  • Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943): The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Op. 31 (1910)
  • 1Blessing00:39
  • 2Bless the Lord, o my soul03:40
  • 3Glory to the Father … Only begotten Son of God03:10
  • 4In Thy Kingdom05:18
  • 5Come, let us worship01:20
  • 6O Lord, Save - Holy God02:40
  • 7Cherubic Hymn05:05
  • 8Father, Son, and Holy Spirit00:54
  • 9Creed08:13
  • 10A Mercy of Peace07:02
  • 11We hymn Thee02:55
  • 12Hymn to the Mother of God03:06
  • 13The Lord's Prayer04:25
  • 14Communion Verse02:14
  • 15We have seen the true light01:27
  • 16Let our mouths be filled04:39
  • 17Blessed be the name of the Lord00:41
  • 18Many years01:04
  • Total Runtime58:32

Info zu Rachmaninov: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

Sergei Rachmaninov's setting of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom - Eastern Christianity's common Eucharistic service liturgy - is regarded as one of the great cornerstones of 20th-century sacred music. This work of symphonic proportions was composed in the summer of 1910, in less than three weeks. After its completion, Rachmaninov wrote to a friend that he had been carried away by the project and that it had been a long time since he had written music with such pleasure. The outcome was judged by contemporary church officials as '...absolutely wonderful, even too beautiful... it is not church music.'

This a cappella choral work is performed by one of the foremost choruses in the world, the Latvian Radio Choir, under the direction of Sigvards Klava. The soloist roles are sung by Kārlis Rūtentāls (tenor; celebrant priest) and Gundrars Dziļums (bass; deacon).

„This may be the finest performance on disc of Rachmaninov's (...) Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The Latvian Radio Choir not only possesses the rich-colored tone (those altos!) and substantial vocal range (those basses!) (...), but also leaves no question as to its collective, deeply felt understanding of the meaning of the texts and of the overall service itself.“ (David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com)

„The Latvian Radio Choir's singing is sensuously beautiful: the tone Slavic, but more refined and better blended than some of that provenance. The choir boasts rich-toned basses capable of sustaining the low B♭ in the Credo. The performance is both devotional and thrillingly dynamic. Pacing is subtly varied to underline the text, often creating, as at the beginning of 'In Thy Kingdom,' a breath-catching sense of time suspended. The balances achieved by Kļava and his chorus of 25 are ideal; the exquisite rising of the pure-voiced soprano soloist from the chorus in 'We Hymn Thee' is but one of many examples. The pitch and diction are exemplary, whether the voices have been tapered to a mere thread of tone or are ringing in the great dome of the Riga Cathedral. The two liturgical soloists are excellent in their truncated roles. The Latvian Radio recording is stunning, creating a palpable sense of the chorus in a large reverberant space with no loss of focus or clarity.“ (Ronald E. Grames, Fanfare Magazine)

Karlis Rutentals, tenor solo (Celebrant Priest, on tracks 1, 10–13, 15)
Gundars Dzilums, bass solo (Deacon, on tracks 1, 5–6, 8–10)
Latvian Radio Choir
Sigvards Klava, conductor

Recorded at the Riga Dome Cathedral in March and April 2008


Sigvards Kļava
began working with the Latvian Radio Choir in 1987 and was appointed its Chief Conductor and Artistic Director in 1992. As one of Latvia's most prolific choral conductors, Sigvards Kļava has collaborated with every leading choir and orchestra in the country, performing the great works of the standard repertoire in addition to conducting most premieres of new choral works by Latvian composers. He has recorded over 20 CDs with the Latvian Radio Choir. Sigvards Kļava has also been Chief Conductor at a number of Latvian and Nordic song festivals. He is a co-founder of the Latvian New Music Festival ARENA and serves as a member of its artistic board. He teaches young conductors at the Choral Department of the Latvian Academy of Music and the Choral College of the Riga Lutheran Cathedral. Sigvards Kļava appears as a guest conductor with leading European choirs. He has received the Latvian Great Music Award and the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers Award.

Einojuhani Rautavaara
(born 9 October 1928) is internationally one of the best known and most frequently performed Finnish composers. He is by nature a romantic, even a mystic, as is often apparent from the titles of his works: for example Angels and Visitations for orchestra or his double-bass concerto Angel of Dusk. Despite Rautavaara's label of "mysticism" he is a complex and contradictory figure whose works cannot be categorized in stylistic terms.

At the age of seventeen Rautavaara began studying the piano and later went on to study musicology at Helsinki University and composition at the Sibelius Academy. From 1951-53 he was a pupil of Aarre Merikanto receiving his diploma in composition in 1957. In 1955 the Koussewitzky Foundation awarded Jean Sibelius a scholarship in honour of his 90th birthday to enable a young Finnish composer of his choice to study in the United States. Sibelius selected Rautavaara who spent two years studying with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and also took part in the summer courses at Tanglewood given by Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland. In 1957 Rautavaara continued his studies with Wladimir Vogel in Ascona, Switzerland and a year later with Rudolf Petzold in Cologne. Rautavaara has taught and lectured at the Sibelius Academy as the professor of composition. Since 1988 he has made his living as a composer in Helsinki.

Rautavaara's earliest works revealed close ties to tradition but also his desire to renew it. They were followed by an extreme constructivist and avant-garde phase (as in the serially organized fourth symphony "Arabescata", 1962) after which Rautavaara turned to hyper-romanticism and finally mysticism. Since the early 1980s, Rautavaara has adopted a sort of post-modern musical language in which modern and traditional elements of varying degrees of constructivism or freedom are combined with one another.

Rautavaara has composed eight symphonies, the most frequently performed of them being the Angel of Light, his seventh symphony. Symphony No. 8, The Journey was premiered in April 2000 by The Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch. Other important groups of works include concertos for different solo instruments, among them the three piano concertos, the popular Violin Concerto (1977), the Harp Concerto (2000) and the Clarinet Concerto (2001-02). Rautavaara has also written a large body of chamber music as well as choral and vocal works including All-Night Vigil for a cappella chorus. One of Rautavaara's most popular works is Cantus arcticus, concerto for birds and orchestra, in which the straightforward orchestral part is juxtaposed with the sounds of birds recorded by the composer himself. Rautavaara's latest orchestral works, published by Boosey & Hawkes, include and Manhattan Trilogy (2004), Book of Visions (2005), Before the Icons (2005) and A Tapestry of Life (2007).

Apart form his symphonies (ODE 1145-2Q) and concertos (ODE 1156-2Q), the central pillars of Rautavaara's extensive oeuvre are his operas. With Vincent (1985-87) and The House of the Sun (1990) Rautavaara has scored a notable international success. Aleksis Kivi (1995-96) was premiered at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1997 and it has been performed in Cosenza, Italy and Minneapolis, U.S.A since then. The latest stage work is Rasputin (2001-2003), an opera about the life of mystic and healer Grigory Rasputin.

Booklet für Rachmaninov: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

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