Special offer. Janacek: Choral Works
Dirk Luijmes (harmonium), Philip Mayers (piano), Thomas Walker (tenor) & Ernestine Stoop (harp)
Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss
Cappella Amsterdam produces a superb choral sound: firm in ensemble and suitably heroic in the higher tenor lines. It clearly identifies closely with this repertoire and captures the off-beat...
Special offer. Janacek: Choral Works
Dirk Luijmes (harmonium), Philip Mayers (piano), Thomas Walker (tenor) & Ernestine Stoop (harp)
Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss
Purchase product
Cappella Amsterdam produces a superb choral sound: firm in ensemble and suitably heroic in the higher tenor lines. It clearly identifies closely with this repertoire and captures the off-beat...
About
Janácek’s choral works draw on an extremely rich repertory of folksongs and folk tales. The composer seized on idioms from Bohemian and Moravian traditions, with their characteristic folk dances and rustic nursery rhymes, and on the recently published ‘Moravian Duets’ of his compatriot Antonín Dvorák, to convey a mixture of emotions, forever shifting between cheerfulness and melancholy, like his subdued harmonies. Here we witness the birth of a musical language which, though deliberately rooted in central Europe, has projected for nearly a century the aura of a universal sentiment.
The professional chamber choir Cappella Amsterdam was founded in 1970. Over the years, under the direction of Daniel Reuss, it has built up a repertoire ranging from early music to contemporary works with a special focus on promoting Dutch music of today.
Contents and tracklist
- Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss, Philip Mayers
- Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss, Philip Mayers
- Dirk Luijmes, Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss, Philip Mayers, Radio Blazers Ensemble, Thomas Walker
- Dirk Luijmes
- Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss, Ernestine Stoop
Awards and reviews
May 2012
Cappella Amsterdam produces a superb choral sound: firm in ensemble and suitably heroic in the higher tenor lines. It clearly identifies closely with this repertoire and captures the off-beat humour of the 1926 version of Nursery Rhymes...this is an attractive recording, and beautifully performed.
May 2012
Daniel Reuss has a good feeling for the cut and colour of Janacek's phrases and the chorus are admirable in making all his originalities fall naturally into place
22nd January 2012
This selection is mostly folk-inspired, apparently sunny but hinting at the psychological darkness of the composer's better known operas...A batch of Nursery Rhymes offer light relief and the disc ends with a serene setting of the "Our Father", sung with well-drilled, idiomatic precision by the long-established Cappella Amsterdam.
13th January 2012
Janácek’s choral music is not widely performed on the international stage, but there is much to enjoy in this programme...a much more personal voice comes through in such pieces as The Wolf’s Trail and a sequence of nursery rhymes, accompanied by instrumental ensemble and performed here with character and distinction.
14th January 2012
From the poignant to patriotic, a super introduction to Janacek and a vital context to enrich appreciation of his operas...A seven-minute mini-opera, The Wolf’s Trail, tells a cautionary tale about sexual jealousy written (Military Wives-style) for a women’s chorus while their husbands were away at the First World War.
