The program heard on this German release is organized around contemporary American choral music by the likes of Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen -- tonal music based on rich harmonic effects but spare in its expressive ethos and not really neo-Romantic in character. These composers have arisen from a nexus of skilled choirs in the United States, largely outside the sphere of academic modernism or urban avant-gardes. They have begun to make an impact in Britain, but, as the booklet for this disc notes, they are almost ...
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The program heard on this German release is organized around contemporary American choral music by the likes of Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen -- tonal music based on rich harmonic effects but spare in its expressive ethos and not really neo-Romantic in character. These composers have arisen from a nexus of skilled choirs in the United States, largely outside the sphere of academic modernism or urban avant-gardes. They have begun to make an impact in Britain, but, as the booklet for this disc notes, they are almost unknown outside of choral spheres in continental Europe. So this release by the energetic German conductor Nicol Matt and his Amadeus-Chor has something of the flavor of a tour through virgin territory. When a body of music is approached from the outside, stylistic boundaries blur in unusual ways. The Anglophone listener may find that any individual piece on this album has been more convincingly sung elsewhere, but that they have not yet been put together in this sequence. Instead of the...
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