Richard Termine for The New York Times

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir flanking the majestic organ at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Music Review | Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

Folkish Sounds of Estonia, With a Dash of Rachmaninoff

By JAMES R. OESTREICH

Published: March 21, 2006

The program was devoted largely to music of Arvo Pärt, and on the strength of it, you might have wished for more. On the other hand, the mere four numbers from Rachmaninoff's glorious Vespers whetted the appetite for the whole work. You might even have wished for more music by Cyrillus Kreek on the basis of his "Five Religious Folk Songs."

It was that kind of concert, by Paul Hillier and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Sunday afternoon. The selections and the performances were so fine that they left you feeling like an ingrate, greedily hungry for more.

Happily, more is available on CD's from Harmonia Mundi France, or will be. Several of the Pärt pieces performed on Sunday here and others are to be released in September. Mr. Hillier's recording of the complete Rachmaninoff Vespers appeared last year.

What is always striking about Mr. Pärt's music is its originality, and that was especially apparent here in "Dopo la Vittoria" ("After the Complete Victory," 1997), to a text from Archbishop Philaret's "History of Church Singers and Chants," of 1902, which tells of the creation of hymns by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. Straight, mundane historical narrative is presented in a joyous, jogging storytelling mode, and the quotations from the hymns themselves soar to transcendent heights.

Mr. Pärt's originality was also apparent in two older organ works, deftly played by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent. "Annum per Annum" (1980), a charming set of variations, begins with a sustained swooning — ultimately, wheezing — decrescendo and ends with a briefer opposite: a triumphant swelling statement of D major.

Remarkably, Rachmaninoff's Vespers, scarcely known in the West a few decades ago, has become almost standard repertory. Dennis Keene and the Voices of Ascension gave a superbly polished account of substantial excerpts at the Church of the Ascension less than a month ago, and the next night Stefan Parkman and the Academy Chamber Choir of Uppsala, Sweden, presented a grippingly theatrical performance of the whole work, also at St. Ignatius.

Mr. Hillier's excerpts were just what you might expect from one of the finest choral conductors of the day with so wondrously talented a group of singers (27 strong). Whatever voices were heard individually were of soloist caliber, and Iris Oja, a mezzo-soprano, was superb in her extended solo, rendered with earth-motherly warmth.

The folkish vein of Kreek's Estonian songs carried into an encore by Mart Saar, another Estonian: "Why Are You Weeping, Oak Tree?

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Monday, March 20, 2006; C05

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

Many spent Friday night celebrating real or imagined Irish heritage, but at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the world-renowned Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir turned its talents toward music from its home country. Under artistic director Paul Hillier and with organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, the choir's performances inspired a transporting awe, hard to find no matter where you're from.

The choir did sing some non-Estonian music, specifically excerpts from Sergei Rachmaninoff's "All-Night Vigil." Those who know Rachmaninoff as Mr. Big Tune will be surprised by this rapt devotional work of Russian Orthodox harmonies and complex vocal techniques. The choir realized every detail of the composer's conception, with perfect blending up and down the tonal spectrum and the kind of virtuosity that makes everything sound easy.

These same virtues shone in the native Estonian works as well: Cyrillus Kreek's imaginative, loving arrangements of five Estonian religious folk songs, and five separate choral pieces by Arvo Part, whose spare harmonies and hypnotic textures have made him Estonia's most famous composer. (Besides providing accompaniment, organist Bowers-Broadbent also soloed in two intriguing Part works.)

The choir's flawless intonation, pure, thrilling tone, and careful attention to text and structure brought out the surprising narrative energy and ebullience of Part's "Dopo la Vittoria," the riveting dissonances in "Nunc Dimittis" and the harmonic ebb and flow of "Da Pacem Domine." At the close of the program, as each word rang out clear and urgent in the breathtakingly intense prayer "Salve Regina," earthly concerns of any kind felt trivial indeed.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone

MUSIC REVIEW

Bringing a master's works to choral life

BY MARION LIGNANA ROSENBERG
SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY

March 22, 2006

The works of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt reach awesome heights and depths of meaning using the simplest musical means. Like visual artist Mark Rothko, who drew primal, spiritual energy from mere colored rectangles, Pärt uses the pared-down language of music -- scales and sometimes single tones -- to construct art of mesmerizing power.

Sunday's Great Performers concert by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir featured five of the master's choral works from the past decade. Pärt's "Salve Regina" opens with a lilting melody that wafts gracefully downward, moving from heaven to earth like the Virgin's sweet mercy. High voices intone humanity's childlike pleas to Mary; the choir's words and sound take on a rapt hush when Jesus' name is invoked.

Here and throughout the program, conductor Paul Hillier drew from the choir music-making of sublime and self-abnegating mastery. Faultless in matters of pitch, dynamics and tonal blend, the choristers never drew attention to their own virtuosity, instead remaining alert to the sense of wonder in Pärt's works. Just as his music both exalts and melts away into its mystical texts, so did the choir sing with soulful, humble beauty.

The audience sat in meditative silence, holding its applause between Pärt's works. The soft, voluptuous final note in "Littlemore Tractus" - evoking the "peace at the last" for which believers hope - hovered, vibrant yet immaterial, in the majestic gold and ochre interior of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Bouncy, glowing bursts of sound, almost Rossinian in jollity, gladdened the narrative portions of Pärt's "Dopo la vittoria," a cantata written for the 1,600th anniversary in 1997 of St. Ambrose's death. In the "Anthem of St. John the Baptist," receiving its New York premiere, the choir evoked a swell of light as Jesus approached the Baptist and a crushing radiance for the Holy Spirit's manifestation. The quiet harmonies that opened "Nunc dimittis" first splayed and then folded in on themselves. A quiet "Amen" brought the canticle to an end, commingling high tones with the basses' stinging buzz.

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent shone in two solo organ works by Pärt.

"Trivium" sets a single tone (the note D) in a prism, exploring its shifting colors and implications, in sonorities ranging from whispers to crashing, grinding swoops. "Annum per annum," a set of variations, is bracketed by an ear-splitting chord that gradually fades to the faint whirr of the organ mechanism, only to make the return journey from the hiss of breath to cosmic vastness at work's end.

In the "Five Religious Folk Songs" by Estonian composer Cyrillus Kreek, the choir created an uncanny sense of homely, familiar dialogue with the divine. Selections from Rachmaninoff's "All-Night Vigil" perhaps wanted a grittier sound, but the choir nonetheless sang with riveting eloquence, summoning tones of searing, inhuman urgency for the angels' proclamation of Jesus' resurrection and glory.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

December 16, 2005

Surprises and Delicacies in a Year of Exciting Classical CD's

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

The classical music critics of The New York Times select the year's most notable CD's.

James R. Oestreich

Rachmaninoff: 'All-Night Vigil'
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, conducted by Paul Hillier (Harmonia Mundi France).

Otherwise known as Rachmaninoff's Vespers, for its first section. Everything Paul Hillier touches turns to choral gold (as used to be the case with Robert Shaw, who also recorded this glorious work beautifully, late in his career). The Estonian choir, complete with the requisite Slavic-style deep basses, gives Mr. Hillier its all.

Songs of a Modern Allegiance and Reverence
Bernard Holland
New York Times (2003-11-11)

Many countries with small military budgets arm themselves with culture. Art tells outsiders what a people think and feel; it also provides a rallying ground and common cause for those within a nation's borders. Never underestimate its power. Maybe this is why musical visitors from Eastern Europe - in this case the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir at the Angel Orensanz Foundation on Nov. 5 - seem to arrive literally brandishing their homegrown creative impulse. Despite a rainy night and the out-of-the-way location on Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side, this shabby chic ex-synagogue was nearly full, with an audience split evenly between the young and the curious, and older people hoping for brief contact with former homelands. If the music ran from the 17th century to the present, the Orthodox Church was never out of earshot. Recent pieces like Galina Grigorjeva's "On Leaving" (mournful, stately), Arvo Pärt's Two Slavonic Psalms (pushed along by uneven phrases) and Alfred Schnittke's Three Sacred Songs (with gently subversive inner harmony and changes of key) more or less ignored the 20th-century world of sound around them.

Dmitry Bortniansky, appearing three times on the program, was a
contemporary of Mozart and survived into old age as Mozart did not, dying in 1825. He created a point where Baroque choral style, the operatic tendencies of the late 18th century and the darkly colored, drone-driven modal style of the Orthodox Church had little trouble meeting. He was a musician of astonishing sophistication and one of the few forgotten composers we might think about remembering.

The Estonians, singing a cappella, were house-proud for their own Mr. Part but also embraced neighboring music from Russia and Ukraine as well as that of two 18th-century Italian transplants, Baldassare Galuppi and Giuseppe Sarti. The chorus sang richly, faithfully in tune and with the expected conviction. Under the British conductor Paul Hillier they were precise without being fanatic about it. It is a nice sound.

Allegiance to one's national music is two-edged. The underpinning that it provides is both strength-giving and reassuring. The heavy magnetic field can also immobilize the imagination. But perhaps I am too American to trust 20th-century composers so abjectly obeisant to their past. A "Gloria" by Vasily Titov, very beautiful, was also sung.

Geoff Chapman
Toronto Star (2003-11-08)

Twenty-seven mesmerizing voices--and music of sustained beauty that's sustenance for the soul.

The vaunted Estonia Philharmonic chamber Choir entranced some hundreds of spectators last night at Metropolitan United Church, that staunch Methodist bastion on Queen, with glorious singing that will reverberate in the memories of listeners for a long time.

The choir, conducted by English artistic director Paul Hillier (who founded the Hilliard Ensemble), was performing the first of two concerts under the auspices of Soundstreams and CBC Radio 2.

The mostly youthful choristers, whose repertoire also extends to Gregorian chant and late Baroque, delivered eight works by mostly alive composers from the Baltic region with focused attention. They sang in English and Latin, as well as their home language, and this, their third visit to Toronto, may have been their best.

The shadow of Orthodox Church liturgy was apparent, but the Baltic region has deep wellsprings of creative art on which to draw, and this choir's concerts and recordings show that Arvo Part should not be the only regional composer familiar to western ears.

Hillier's pinpoint control was evident from Estonian Cyrillus Kreek's "Three Psalms of David", which made a fine opening. Precisely layered and featuring deliciously rich resonance in the crucial low registers. It was followed by (Estonia's) Part, the eloquent simplicity of his "Two Slavic Psalms tastefully emphasized, its purity never allowed become merely plain.

Perhaps the second ranking composer from Estonia is VeljoTormis, but his "Kullerva's Message," drawn from mythic tales of long ago and sung in English was more novelty than enlightenment.

All this serious Baltic music allows little interpretive choice and this relatively frisky, martial piece done with just 16 singers in English was often strident. It was the weakest point of the evening.

Yet that's weak compared to the truly glowing elsewhere, such as the succeeding "Alleluiah" of Lithuania's Algirdas Martinaitis with polyphony so accomplished it left this scribe in awe.

Russia's Alfred Schnittke drew on Orthodox liturgy for his "Three Sacred Songs," the first known to the West as "Ave Maria": the last as the Lord's Prayer.

Here refined sensibility was in place, neatly balancing intensity and dignity; and offering palpable beauty with the bonus of scrupulous diction.

Russian-born Galina Grigorjeva is now an Estonian, her "On Leaving" featuring a brooding soulfulness that suited this examination of the moment of death with poetry and polyphony based on prayer texts.

It was deeply spiritual, an excellent high tenor soloist most affecting and the ultra-deep basses fathoming the bleakness of it all.

Denmark's Per Norgard has found a majestic flow as well as a devilishly complex set of time signatures for his "Winter Hymn" that was dispatched with a unique fervour, but it was matched in appeal by the choir's profound reading in Latin of Estonian composer Urmas Sisask's five-part "Gloria Patri." The frequent result were passages of serene loveliness.

Tomorrow night at the same venue at 7:30, the choir, joined by Canada's Elmer Iseler Singers, will perform a mixed program that includes new Canadian works and the North American premiere of Henryk Gorecki's epic "Salve Sidus Polinarum."

From the Baltics, With Intensity
Daniel Schlosberg
Newsday (2003-11-07)

Just what, exactly, are they putting in that Baltic Sea? If you've been following the worldwide classical music scene the past couple of decades, you have to be asking yourself such a question, as so many renowned musicians hail from the region. From the idiosyncratic Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer to the intrepid Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Baltics seem to be a hotbed of some of today's most interesting musical activity.

The Baltics boast particular pride among vocal groups. The Swedish Radio Choir and the St. Petersburg State Academic Capella (which performed last week) are both at the top of their genre. So, too, with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, which performed under its illustrious director, Paul Hillier, at the Orensanz Center on the Lower East Side Wednesday.

The program of Russian choral music proved to be a soberly intense evening. The offerings from this specialized repertoire was evenly divided between old and new, and the most contemporary voices were the most thought provoking. For example, the longest work of the evening, Galina Grigorjeva's (b. 1962) "On Leaving," which represents the departure of the soul from the body, displayed a keen ear for sonorities. Subtle dissonance here and there inflected, but did not disrupt, a pervasively expansive quality.
And the encore, an "Alleluia" by the Lithuanian Algirdas Martinaitis (b. 1950), juxtaposed an almost Christmas- carol bounce with undercurrents of unease. The unresolved ending proved particularly disquieting.

The 18th century was chiefly represented by Dmitry Bortniansky (1751-1825), whose conservative style (even given the time) effectively emits the sense of suffering and mystery that is at the heart of so much Russian music. It was also revealing to hear a work from the classical era by Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785). His "In the Flesh Thou Didst Fall Asleep," included some intricate counterpoint, which the ensemble dispatched with confidence.

Throughout the evening, the choir sang with control, precision and care. It is not a group that relishes overt drama, and Hillier favors blend and balance over a larger emotional palette. Indeed, the most affecting moments were often the most quiet, where a barely perceptible sound demonstrated the group's magnificent sense of ensemble. The chorus barely seemed to move, which reinforced the reserved, grave nature of the music.
Its comportment, as well as its musicality, also underscored the general aesthetic of Russian Orthodox choral music. As a matter of doctrine, musical instruments are not allowed inside church doors, and choral singing in the service assumes a significance on par with prayer. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Chorus distinctly evoked that quality of devotion.

The gilded, seemingly ageless Orensanz Center, a former synagogue, provided the perfect backdrop for the meditative and often ravishing performances by this formidable ensemble.

BALTIC VOICES 2
URMAS SISASK
Five songs from Gloria Patri (1988)
TOIVO TULEV
And then in silence there with me be only You (2002)
PER NORGARD
Winter Hymn (1976/84)
GALINA GRIGORJEVA
On Leaving (1999)
ALFRED SCHNITTKE
Three Sacred Hymns (1983/84)
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Paul Hillier
Harmonia Mundi- 907331(CD)
No Reference Recording

No musical realm is more alive and fertile regarding the production and performance of new works than that of choral and vocal music. Of course, much of it tends to be highly imitative/derivative/predictable--mostly for reasons of singability--but the really interesting new(er) stuff shows that even with the physical limitations of voices and singing technique, and even within the tonal world, there's still lots of room for originality. And because so much new choral music is written and performed every year, choral music fans are some of the most experienced, adventurous, savvy, and open-minded listeners who, while they appreciate uniqueness and experimentation, also are intolerant of music that fails to engage, entertain, move, or otherwise make a discernible point relative to its particular text choices and musical setting.

In the second installment of their Baltic Voices series, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and conductor Paul Hillier focus on sacred music from Estonia, the Ukraine, Denmark, and Russia, all of it written during the past 20 years. Two of the works--Galina Grigorjeva's On Leaving and Toivo Tulev's And then in silence there with me be only You--are world-premiere recordings, and the rest likely will be new to the ears of most North American listeners. And for all discerning choral music lovers, there's good news: the pieces on display here are not only well worth hearing but in several cases merit regular inclusion on concert programs. And at the very least, the recording should win deserved attention for Estonian composers Urmas Sisask and Toivo Tulev and renewed regard for Per Norgard's choral works.

Although I would hesitate to use the word "masterpiece" for anything included here, I would apply the words "beautiful" and "tuneful" and "affecting" to the five selections from Sisask's Gloria Patri, which the choir sings with ardent enthusiasm and, in the slow, quiet "Oremus" movement, with patiently, perfectly sustained harmonic tension and (as everywhere) dead-on intonation. Tulev's And then in silence is very different in its sometimes quirky melodic leaps, more dissonant harmonies, and inventive use of sectional contrasts and extremes of choral registers.

Galina Grigorjeva's On Leaving consists of five sections and lasts nearly 22 mostly-interesting minutes. It's firmly rooted in Russian Orthodox choral style, variously employing modal melody and harmony, thick, bass-heavy textures, and harmonized and unison chant, adding a few more modern touches including an improvisatory-sounding flute (in Ode 1) and frequent washes of colorful dissonance. Per Norgard's Winter Hymn is "an arrangement of the composer's Winter Cantata" by Swedish conductor Gunnar Eriksson, and it's a gem, a masterful musical realization of poet Ole Sarvig's English version of his original poem "The Year". The work's essential appeal comes from its varied and skillfully-wrought harmony, imaginatively combining the traditonal with more modern structures and occasionally foiling the expected functional relationships. It makes for nine minutes of restrained yet memorable, moody drama. Schnittke's Three Sacred Hymns are relatively short but densely packed, soulful expressions born of Russian church music tradition.

Once again, Hillier and his first-rate choir touch us with exemplary renditions of rare yet extraordinary repertoire that truly does make its respective points, both spiritual and musical--recorded in very fine, well-balanced sound that only loses detail in the most impossibly thick-textured passages. This sort of willingness to investigate and prepare new music for performance demands continued support and encouragement by all who love singing. On to Volume 3!

--David Vernier