Anthem: The Dove Descending Breaks the Air, for chorus
Threni: id est Lamentationes Jerimię Prophetę, for 6 vocal soloists, chorus & orchestra
Requiem Canticles, for 2 vocal soloists, chorus & orchestra
Sacrę Cantiones (3), for chorus (after Gesualdo): Da Pacem Domine
All four of the works on this album come from the last part of Stravinsky's career, when he accepted the reigning serialist orthodoxy of the day. As with other music of the period, these have declined in performance frequency (and were never that popular to begin with) since then. Yet they respond well to the rather stark performances of which early music singers are capable, and that's what you get here from the superb Collegium Vocale Ghent and Royal Flemish Philharmonic. Three of the four are serialist; the last is a ...
Read More
All four of the works on this album come from the last part of Stravinsky's career, when he accepted the reigning serialist orthodoxy of the day. As with other music of the period, these have declined in performance frequency (and were never that popular to begin with) since then. Yet they respond well to the rather stark performances of which early music singers are capable, and that's what you get here from the superb Collegium Vocale Ghent and Royal Flemish Philharmonic. Three of the four are serialist; the last is a completion of a motet by Renaissance experimentalist Carlo Gesualdo. Of the two large chorus-and-orchestra pieces, the Requiem Canticles of 1966 probably enjoy more frequent performances as Stravinsky's last major composition. They are short, almost fragmentary settings of requiem texts that bring Webern to mind. The lesser-known work is Threni (1958), a setting of selections from the Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet . This work perhaps comes closer than any other to bringing...
Read Less