Russian music since the fall of the Soviet Union has often been vibrant, with composers drawing on previously forbidden traditions in unique personal ways. (One wonders why fiction has apparently been less successful in general.) Composer Alexander Raskatov draws in these extraordinary works, for instance, on Russian Orthodox church music, and the two works are settings of liturgical texts. Yet this is very far from being a slightly updated version of Rachmaninov's sacred music. Rather, it's a bit like a George Crumb ...
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Russian music since the fall of the Soviet Union has often been vibrant, with composers drawing on previously forbidden traditions in unique personal ways. (One wonders why fiction has apparently been less successful in general.) Composer Alexander Raskatov draws in these extraordinary works, for instance, on Russian Orthodox church music, and the two works are settings of liturgical texts. Yet this is very far from being a slightly updated version of Rachmaninov's sacred music. Rather, it's a bit like a George Crumb interpretation of Russian choral music. The two works on the album, both for male quartets (one with strings, one with optional bells, and there are no bells here), are somewhat different from one another, although they're recognizably products of the same pen. Obikhod (2002-2003), a word meaning a book of common Russian Orthodox chants, is filled with odd vocal effects (one of them, for instance, is a kind of vocal shiver) that are strategically deployed to illustrate words in the text....
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