Binary Creed

Jephtha, first performed in 1752, was Handel’s last major work, written while he was struggling with poor health and failing eyesight. Yet the score contains some of his most powerful and moving music, notably the chorus’s bleak paean to blind faith, ‘How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees!’ Jephtha is also one of his more operatic oratorios and, if many Baroque operas require the suspension of disbelief, this libretto (by Thomas Morell) may need modern listeners to suspend their distaste at the perversities of its 18th-century pietism. Handel’s wonderfully humane music cuts through all such sanctimony, however, as if – as the Handel scholar Winton Dean has argued – in highlighting the themes of personal suffering and capricious fate, Handel implicitly ‘makes Jehovah the villain of the piece’.

Marcus Creed amply proves in this recording of the Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne and the Dixit Dominus that he has what it takes to conduct George Frederick Handel. He's got the big beat down, plus the muscular rhythms, vigorous tempos, and vivid textures, as well as the tight ensembles and the unstoppable drive so essential in making Handel come alive. And that's just in the fast choral movements. In the solos and duets, Creed creates poised, alert, and wholly sympathetic accompaniments that help shape the singers' performances as part of the total work. And what singers! Both sopranos are superlative, especially Sophie Kussmann, and countertenor Andreas Scholl is, as always, strong, yet supple and sensitive.

Das SWR Vokalensemble gehört zu den besten Chören der Welt. Ein weiterer Baustein in der Serie mit Chorwerken aus verschiedenen Ländern. Sehr selten aufgeführte Werke von Szymanowski, Gorecki, Haubenstock-Ramati und Lutoslawski, den bedeutendsten polnischen Komponisten. Dass Polen besonders im 20. Jahrhundert so viele und so herausragende Komponisten hervorgebracht hat, ist angesichts der politischen Geschichte des Landes sehr überraschend. Nach dem 2. Weltkrieg und nach Stalins Tod brach sich auf dem Musikfestival 'Warschauer Herbst' 1956 die aufgestaute Kreativität Bahn und es präsentierte sich das ungeheure musikalische Potential des Landes einer erstaunten Weltöffentlichkeit.

This disc gathers all of Brahms' sacred choral music for unaccompanied mixed voices, except for the Sieben Marienlieder of 1859. Taken together with the accompanied sacred choral pieces, including the monumental German Requiem, this amounts to a significant body of work for a composer of his era who was not religious. Brahms was a skilled choral composer and it's a shame that his smaller a cappella works aren't performed more frequently. Except for Zwei Motetten from 1864, all these works come from the last two decades of his life.

After the celebrated Stabat Mater, already recorded to great acclaim by the RIAS-Kammerchor, here is Rossini’s other masterpiece in the domain of sacred music, the last of his “sins of old age”. This Petite Messe solennelle is indeed “small” in terms of the forces deployed - the instrumental accompaniment is limited to two pianos and a harmonium - but it also well deserves the adjective “solemn” for its ample scale and its formidable dramatic power. In many respects, this work may be seen as its composer’s musical testament. Dazzled, like all his critical colleagues, Filippo Filippi wrote after the first performance in March 1864: “This time, Rossini has surpassed himself, for no-one can tell what is the more impressive, his learning or his inspiration.”

The folk music of the Baltic peoples can be traced back to pagan times whereas the development of their art music did not start until around 100 years ago. Every country has it's own founding fathers where music is concerned: the Estonians admire Heino Eller and the Latvians Jazeps Vitols as the founder of their respective national music culture. Arvo Part was one of Eller's students. The founding figure of Lithuanian art music and art is Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, who created fugues and sonatas as well as symphonic poems, music for piano, and choral works. This is the ninth and last installment of the SWR Vokalensemble series dedicated to musical portraits of different countries and the last release with it's chief conductor Marcus Creed. The SWR Vokalensemble is internationally renowned as one of the best choirs for modern a cappella repertoire, it's performances are characterized by exquisite mastership.