Latvian Radio Choir

Meditation, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca's 2014 release on Deutsche Grammophon, is an album of serene vocal and choral works that express religious feelings with an operatic touch and showcase the Latvian singer's warm and radiant voice. Choosing pieces from the early Baroque era to contemporary works, Garanca presents a soothing program that is consistent in its comforting tone and gentle treatment, though as a purely musical consideration, it tends to flow a bit too evenly and predictably. Insofar as the selections represent the Christian tradition, including settings of the Ave Maria, the Salve Regina, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, and the Regina Coeli, the character of the collection admits little variety, except for the general alternation between penitential and quietly ecstatic moods.

Arvo Pärt - Musica Selecta (2015) {2CD ECM New Series 2454/55}
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© 2015 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2454/55 / 481 1905
Classical / Avant-Garde / Choral / Orchestral / Modern Composition / Miscellaneous (Classical)

As the title and subtitle imply, this is a kind of greatest-hits album, with music selected by ECM label producer Manfred Eicher from the 12 albums on the label devoted to the music of Arvo Pärt. Pärt's music is so malleable that people tend to make their own versions of it rather than collect it, but if you wanted an anthology as a starter box, this would be the one to choose. Eicher has worked closely with Pärt since the 1980s, and he has indeed made a sensible "sequence" out of works that do not have a lot of contrast among them.

Gustav Mahlers 8th Symphony breaks the boundaries of the symphonic form in a world-embracing gesture. Riccardo Chailly is one of the staunchest performers of this work, and therefore it seemed appropriate in many ways that he chose this work for his inaugural concert as Claudio Abbados successor and new music director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The artistic statement was combined with a deeply personal conviction: it should be a 'tribute to Claudio', the highly esteemed friend and colleague to whom Chailly, as he emphasizes, owes very much. On 12 August 2016, Claudio Abbados unfinished Mahler cycle with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was completed in a breathtaking performance of the Mahler 8th, simultaneously heralding in a new era in Lucerne.

The Sinfonietta Riga chamber orchestra was founded relatively recently, in 2006, and selection of compositions written for the orchestra and its conductor, Normunds Sne, are even younger. Ruta Paidere's Tempera is from 2012, Andris Dzenitis composed Euphoria in 2017, Aigars Raumanis and Sinfonietta Riga first performed the Temperature of Plastics concerto for saxophone and chamber orchestra by Platons Buravickis in 2019, and Linda Leimane's Ray-Bows also dates to 2019, although it premiered only in 2021.

Nuit Sacrée documents a televised concert that was broadcast on Christmas Day 2009 on France 2, one of the main French TV Channels, from St Thomas’s Church in Strasbourg. It features some of the finest sacred pieces linked to the festive season, and an impressive array of some of the best musicians of our time. Perhaps the major attraction is the multi-award winning chamber choir Accentus under its acclaimed conductor Laurence Equilbey. They are joined by the equally celebrated baroque specialist ensemble Concerto Köln and several outstanding vocal and instrumental soloists, among them soprano Sandrine Piau, contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, bass-baritone Johannes Weisser and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton.

Marshalling orchestral and choral forces under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste, this new Arvo Pärt album, produced by Manfred Eicher and realized, like all Pärt’s ECM discs, with the composer’s participation, is a major event. Sacred music predominates, by turns monumentally powerful and tenderly fragile.