The Lent

The Russian Orthodox music presented here comes from the music for Great Lent, which is a meditation on the meaning of Holy Week. Great Lent or Velikiy Post, is the most important and one of the longest of the four Lenten periods in the year. It opens with a powerfully meditative chant 'Let all mortal flesh keep silent' which is specially sung only once a year along with the Old Testament lamentation 'By the rivers of Babylon'. The music here is, as usual with Orthodox chant, profoundly solemn and deeply meditative - some would say even mystical.

The chamber music of Clérambault has been a real voyage of discovery for The Bach Players. We mostly know Clérambault as the composer of many wonderful Cantatas. His chamber music is written in a very different style. Here he joins Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and François Couperin in experimenting with the Italian style that gradually gained popularity in France. None of these works were published during his lifetime. We owe it to the good taste of Sébastien de Brossard, who copied these scores, that this wonderfully expressive music was preserved for us to enjoy today.

Through the intimate voice of the string quartet, Diffusion explores a mosaic of folk cultures through the lens Janáček's String Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters," Szymanowski's String Quartet No. 2 Op. 56, and Ravel's String Quartet in F Major M. 35. As an ensemble of four nations (Singapore, Canada, United States, and United Kingdom), the Verona Quartet reveals a kaleidoscopic snapshot of cultural migration at the turn of the century.