British chamber choir Polyphony has recorded a collection of music by Morten Lauridsen that includes not only his gorgeous but ubiquitous cycle Les chansons des roses, but two less familiar cycles, Mid-Winter Songs, and Nocturnes, and several shorter pieces. The sound of the choir is full, rich, and well blended, and the singers perform with absolute confidence, fully secure with the composer's close harmonies and unresolved dissonances. Their grasp of a full range of articulation, from crisp staccato to velvety legato, is ...
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British chamber choir Polyphony has recorded a collection of music by Morten Lauridsen that includes not only his gorgeous but ubiquitous cycle Les chansons des roses, but two less familiar cycles, Mid-Winter Songs, and Nocturnes, and several shorter pieces. The sound of the choir is full, rich, and well blended, and the singers perform with absolute confidence, fully secure with the composer's close harmonies and unresolved dissonances. Their grasp of a full range of articulation, from crisp staccato to velvety legato, is especially striking. Conductor Stephen Layton leads the choir in an unusually nuanced and expressive performance of Les chansons des roses, with great flexibility of tempo, bringing out compositional felicities that can go unnoticed in more conventional readings with straighter tempos. His reading of the cycle Mid-Winter Songs, accompanied by Britten Sinfonia, is notable for its bristling energy and high drama. Three shorter sacred pieces are recorded here for the first time. Two of...
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