Vocal and Choral

Benedict Sheehan – Akahist
Choir of Trinity Wall Street; Artefact Ensemble; Novus NY
Bright Shiny Things (BSTC-0210 brightshiny.ninja/akathist)

Benedict Sheehan’s epic oratorio came to be as a poignant reminder of the dark days of the Stalinist purges. The language of this work has at its heart Akathist: Glory to God for All Things, an Eastern Orthodox service in plainchant, as a hymn of thanksgiving. However, the musical topography traversed by Sheehan’s work references all of fallen humanity – from the earliest times to that of our day. 

The sweeping chorales on two discs centre on the theology of Ecclesia (the community of the church) and Sapientia (holy wisdom) and appear to proffer the blinding light of God’s invisible spiritual wisdom emanating from the Heavens as a salve to heal the grief of the evils on earth. 

Melding liturgical songs (antiphons, responsories, sequences and hymns) sung by the glorious voices of several soloists and choral groups, accompanied by an instrumental ensemble into a modern-day symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum (a symphony of heavenly revelations) Sheehan has created a harmonious combination of different musical sounds, woven into the divine cosmic harmony. 

In fact Sheehan has created a powerful metaphor that unites the physical and the spiritual realms that brings both participant and listener into a closer – mystical – relationship with the divine. The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the Trinity Youth Chorus, combined with the voices of the Artefact Ensemble and the Downtown Voices, together with instrumental ensemble NOVUS NY bring the spontaneity of Akathist to life.

Zibuokle Martinaityte – Aletheia: Choral Works
Latvian Radio Choir; Sigvards Klava
Ondine ODE 1447-2 (ondine.net/index.php?lid=en&cid=2.2&oid=7307)

On Aletheia, celebrated Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė has used the wordless language of the heart to drive the emotional spirituality of these four outstanding choral works. Using thrillingly sensuous music of bright acoustic colours and resonant fades, she has created a vocabulary defined by note durations, attack and intensities through throat-singing, drones and other vocal devices. In fact, she has brought new meaning and beauty to the mystique of spiritual music. 

In the titular first work on this disc Martinaitytė evokes the horrors of the Russian invasion of Lithuania, a personal trauma that was triggered by the more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ululations is a work similar to Aletheia. Although it is not born of the despair and trauma of the latter work, it is born of an elemental, “ululating” wail. 

Chant des Voyelles employs voices to mimic the curves of sculptures by the cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. And although The Blue of Distance has no particular setting, this sweeping Whitmanesque piece completes the exquisite cycle of mystical chorales vividly interpreted by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava.

Walter Braunfels – Jeanne d’Arc
Juliane Banse;  Salzburger Bachchor and Kinderchor; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Manfred Honeck
Capriccio C5515 (naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=C5515)

Her brief but eventful life and agonizing death have been depicted in paintings, books, plays, films and several operas, most notably those by Verdi and Tchaikovsky. In 1943, Walter Braunfels completed the three-act opera he titled Szenen aus dem Leben der Heilige Johanna (Scenes from the Life of Saint Joan). It wasn’t heard, however, until 2001 in a concert performance in Stockholm conducted by Manfred Honeck (since 2008 the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra). At the 2013 Salzburg Festival, Honeck again conducted a concert performance, preserved in this two-CD set.

Braunfels’ self-written libretto traces, in seven scenes, Joan’s life from when she first receives her marching orders from Saints Catherine, Margaret and Michael until her immolation at the stake. It’s dramatically compelling throughout, illuminated by Braunfels’ powerful score, composed in the post-Wagnerian Germanic idiom that Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker employed in their increasingly admired operas – rapturous flights of vocal lyricism amid intense, tonally indecisive harmonies and boldly-coloured orchestral strokes.

The chorus provides some of the opera’s most thrilling passages – the stirring scene as the entire ensemble prepares to march off to the besieged city of Orleans, singing of the victory to come; the exalted grandeur of King Charles’ coronation; and the angry mob of Rouen’s townspeople demanding Joan’s death. The opera’s closing minutes are extraordinarily emotion-wrenching – Joan’s ecstatic, final outburst at her trial for heresy (Braunfels quoted her words from the actual trial documents), Gilles de Rais’ anguished aria as he witnesses Joan’s execution and the chorus of townspeople, having seen Joan’s heart unburned and a dove rising from her ashes, proclaiming a holy miracle.

Leading the superb cast are soprano Juliane Banse (Joan), her light, bright voice perfect for the teenage heroine, tenor Pavel Breslik (King Charles), bass-baritone Johan Reuter (Gilles de Rais) and bass Ruben Drole (Duke of La Trémouille). As the opera requires an additional 12 soloists plus chorus and children’s chorus, in today’s economic climate the expense of mounting a fully-staged production of such an unfamiliar opera may be too risky an enterprise. But it surely deserves to be seen as well as heard! (Texts and translations are included.)

Silenced – Unsung Voices of the 20th Century (Schreker; Ullmann; Kapralova; Zemlinsky)
Ian Koziara; Bradley Moore
Cedille CDR 90000 231 (cedillerecords.org/albums/silenced-unsung-voices-of-the-20th-century)

They were enjoying successful careers as composers and conductors until their Jewish ancestry resulted in their “voices” being “silenced” by the Nazis, their music banned, their podium engagements cancelled, their lives altered. Franz Schreker (1878-1934) suffered a fatal stroke; self-exiled Vitežslava Kaprálová (1915-1940) succumbed to disease in France; Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) died, forgotten, in New York; Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) was murdered in Auschwitz. But their music survives, here performed with operatic fervour by American heldentenor Ian Koziara; Bradley Moore scintillates in the often elaborate, extended piano accompaniments.

Three early songs by Schreker are highlighted by the surging, ecstatic Frühling (Spring), celebrating “spring’s splendour.” Heightened drama imbues five songs by Zemlinsky – two filled with reverential religiosity, two bitterly sardonic about wartime mutilation and mortality; the fifth, a despairing “dance of death.” Of the ten chromatic, emotionally-laden songs by Kaprálová, the first Czech woman to conduct professionally, I particularly enjoyed the rhapsodic Jitro (Morning), the wild, surrealistic Jamí Pout’ (Spring Fair), the regretful Navždy (Forever) and the passionate Čím Je Můj Žal (What Is My Grief).

Ullmann, despite studying with Arnold Schoenberg (who studied with Zemlinsky!), never embraced serialism, although his music is tonally ambiguous. Three of this CD’s seven songs stand out: the robust Schnitterlied (Reaper-Song), the satiric Die Schweitzer (The Swiss) and the ruminative Abendphantasie (Evening Fantasy). Abendphantasie, composed during Ullmann’s internment in Terezin, ends with the supremely ironic words, “my old age will be peaceful and serene.”

Where Waters Meet
Canadian Chamber Choir; Sherryl Sewepagaham
Independent (canadianchamberchoir.bandcamp.com/album/where-waters-meet)

Formed in 1999, the Canadian Chamber Choir has a unique approach to music making. Under the direction of Julia Davids and associate conductor Joel Tranquilla, the ensemble draws members from all parts of the country and convenes periodically in different cities across Canada spending three or four days in rehearsal before presenting concerts or workshops. 

This newest recording titled Where Waters Meet featuring singer Sherryl Sewepagaham is an homage to Canadian Indigenous culture and appears at a particularly fortuitous time when the Indigenous presence in Canada is receiving long-overdue recognition.

Sewepagaham, a Cree-Dene artist from Little Red River Cree Nation in Northern Alberta, opens the recording with the haunting Morning Drum Song. The remainder of the pieces appropriately have an aquatic theme, including Hussein Janmohamed’s Sun on Water which comprises a true melding of cultures in its use of texts from Hindi, Islamic, Christian and Cree cultures.

The major piece in the program, Where Waters Meet by Canadian arctic composer Carmen Braden with texts by First Nations playwright Yolanda Bonnell, is in four movements, interspersed throughout the recording. The words are inspired by various sources, with the third movement based on a 2022 Toronto Star article focusing on the issue of poor water quality found in many Indigenous communities.

What a wonderful sound this ensemble achieves, at all times demonstrating a keen sense of dynamics and phrasing. All the while, Sewepagaham, as a soloist either with or without the choir, delivers a compelling performance, the voice of a culture too long under-acknowledged. Attractive packaging and detailed notes further enhance an already fine recording.

Listen to 'Where Waters Meet' Now in the Listening Room

Luna Pearl Woolf – Jacqueline
Marnie Breckenridge; Matt Haimovitz
Pentatone PTC5187341 (pentatonemusic.com/product/jacqueline)

“It is with a heavy heart that I must cancel my engagements,” announces Jacqueline du Pré towards the end of Canadian-American composer Luna Pearl Woolf’s gripping chamber opera, Jacqueline. It’s 1973, and the incomparable British cellist is only 28 years old. But the ravages of MS have forced her to stop performing.      

Woolf and her librettist, Canadian Royce Vavrek, focus on du Pré’s most significant relationship – with her cello. There are just two performers. It’s a daring artistic choice, and it works brilliantly here. The charismatic American soprano Marnie Breckenridge is du Pré, and cellist extraordinaire, Montreal-based Matt Haimovitz, is her cello. It is as dramatic as it is moving.      

Other performers will undoubtedly want to take on these two challenging roles. But it’s hard to imagine anyone surpassing either Breckenridge or Haimovitz. Breckenridge evokes du Pré with untethered intensity. Yet her voice retains its luminous allure throughout. Haimovitz does full justice to du Pré’s matchless sound with his richly expressive tone and effortless technique. 

Vavrek, newly-appointed Artistic Director of Against the Grain, shows why his work is in such demand by composers today. His libretto is unsparing. But it’s poetic and playful enough to offset the grimness of du Pré’s struggles, recalling joyful childhood memories and key works that defined her career.

Pentatone has produced an especially attractive CD set, with a booklet containing the full libretto and photos of the original staging by Toronto’s Tapestry Opera in 2020.

Kris Defoort – The Time of Our Singing
Claron McFadden; Mark S. Doss; Simon Bailey; Levy Sekgapane; La Monnaie Chamber Orchestra; Kwamé Ryan
Fuga Libera FUG837 (outhere-music.com/en/albums/kris-defoort-time-our-singing)

Belgian composer Kris Defoort’s multilayered opera The Time of Our Singing follows members of a mixed-race family through the years 1939 to 1992. Repeatedly they are torn apart by the pernicious effects of the racism they each have to confront in their lives. But their shared passion for music always brings them back together. 

Defoort and his compatriot, librettist Peter van Kraaij, have adapted a 629-page novel by Richard Powers, published over 20 years ago. In contrast to the novel, which jumps around in time, the opera follows a traditional chronological narrative. The harmonic language is familiar, the rhythmic structure clear. Yet it sounds startlingly new, and fundamentally of our time. 

The many musical references are taken directly from Powers’ novel. Since they are integral to the story, Defoort weaves them right into the texture of the opera. The sounds of Dowland, Purcell, Bach, Puccini, spirituals, cool jazz, rock, hip-hop, free jazz and rap all shape the characters in this African American-Jewish family. The hip-hop beat that drives the activist daughter Ruth’s sensational I will tell you about Blackness has an urgency that intensifies her fury. Exquisite modernist textures colour the heartbreaking deathbed scene between the father, David, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and younger son Joey, a pianist. The transformation of Purcell’s Music for a While into an infectiously catchy vocal ensemble is used to bring the three siblings together for what turns out to be the last time. “Classics meets the street,” the eldest son Jonah, an opera singer, says. “People need this,” he adds. Indeed.

Defoort and van Kraaij draw on key historic events in the never-ending struggle for civil rights in America. Inevitably what happens globally impacts each character directly. Marian Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 brings hope and joy to Delia, an African American singer, and David when they first meet there. But the Rodney King riots in 1992 bring tragedy for Jonah. 

This live recording was made during the first staged production at La Monnaie in 2021, which won the the International Opera Award 2022 for Best World Premiere. The excellent cast, with Claron McFadden, Abigail Abraham, Lilly Jørstad, Levy Sekgapane, Simon Bailey, Peter Braithwaite and Mark S. Doss, the jazz quartet featuring Mark Turner’s melancholy tenor saxophone, the La Monnaie Chamber Orchestra and choirs, are all led by Canadian-Trinidadian conductor Kwamé Ryan with palpable insight and versatility.