エストニアの声楽アンサンブルによる清冽で崇高な合唱曲集

民謡収集家としても知られるエストニアの作曲家キリルス・クレーク(1889-1962)による合唱作品集です。歌っているのはヴォックス・クラマンティス。1996年にヤーン=エイク・トゥルヴェによって創設されたエストニアの声楽アンサンブルで、グレゴリオ聖歌、中世の多声声楽曲、現代音楽を得意としています。スウェーデンの民族楽器ニッケルハルパ(nyckelharpa)、エストニアのチター属の楽器カンネル(kannel)が、民族音楽を愛したクレークの作品をさらに奥深いものにしています。歌詞付き。
ユニバーサル・ミュージック/IMS

発売・販売元 提供資料 （2020/02/13）

Cyrillus Kreek is a fascinating figure hardly known except in Estonia, where his music is often performed and used in home music-making. Like Bartok, he collected folk music in the field and used it as the basis for new compositions; unlike Bartok, much of the music he collected was sacred. His innovations were not rhythmic but melodic and his settings are more than harmonizations, taking their shapes from that of the melodies. There are three types of pieces here, hymns, which are based directly on folk songs, psalm settings, where the folk influence is indirect, and what are known as runic songs, featuring repeated phrases that facilitated choral memorization. The overall effect is that something ancient and mysterious has been contacted, an effect emphasized by the inclusion of a Machaut chanson, Dame, vostre doulz viaire. This presentation introduces the hymns with a trio, or parts of it, consisting of two nyckelharpas (an instrument associated with Sweden but played across much of northern Europe) and a kannel, an Estonian zither. This is not authentic to Kreeks compositions but is not far from them in mood and idea. The choir Vox Clamantis and its director, Jaan-Eik Tulve, has a sort of dreamily warm sound ideal for this music, and even better is ECMs pristine engineering work at Tallinns Transfiguration Church. A deeply absorbing recording that lingers in the mind long after it ceases to sound.

Rovi