Stephen Chatman –
Magnificat: Songs of Reflection
UBC University Singers; Graeme Langager; UBC Symphony Orchestra;
Jonathan Girard
Centrediscs CMCCD 19313
Students at UBC are fortunate to have one of Canada’s most popular choral composers close at hand. Stephen Chatman, multiple JUNO nominee and a Member of the Order of Canada, is Professor and Chair of Composition at the UBC School of Music. In this recording, the UBC University Singers and Symphony Orchestra begin with his setting of the Magnificat, a work commissioned in 2010 by the Vancouver Chamber Choir. Chatman begins the piece with the traditional Latin text, and then sets the following sections in the six official languages of the Vancouver Winter Olympics: French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian and English. The 40-voice choir handles the linguistic transitions well and there are some wonderful changes of cultural idiom for the orchestra. A fourth year student (at the time of recording), soloist Bahareh Poureslami manages the voice of Mary with lovely expressiveness ranging from tender anticipation to soaring joy and divine rapture.
Following with a collection of “songs of reflection” the choir performs (sans orchestra) Chatman’s settings of contemplative poetry by Christina Rossetti, Sara Teasdale and Walt Whitman, as well as two from FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat and John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields. Themes of love, loss and longing, followed by transcendence and peace, find tender expression through skilful composition and artful nuance in the choir’s performance.
