The BBC Singers, led by Stephen Cleobury, perform a variety of choral pieces by Michael Tippett, written between the late '30s and early '60s. They sing with a uniformly pure and well-blended tone and negotiate Tippett's knotty dissonances with assurance. Due to the composer's predilection for dense harmonies, there are moments of textural murkiness, but the singers shine as much light as possible into the tightly packed chords. Dance, Clarion Air, to a text by Christopher Fry, is an outburst of choral ecstasy reminiscent ...
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The BBC Singers, led by Stephen Cleobury, perform a variety of choral pieces by Michael Tippett, written between the late '30s and early '60s. They sing with a uniformly pure and well-blended tone and negotiate Tippett's knotty dissonances with assurance. Due to the composer's predilection for dense harmonies, there are moments of textural murkiness, but the singers shine as much light as possible into the tightly packed chords. Dance, Clarion Air, to a text by Christopher Fry, is an outburst of choral ecstasy reminiscent of The Midsummer Marriage. The folk song and hymn arrangements are among the most attractive pieces on the disc. Tippett's settings allow the original melody to take center stage, and his inventive and often surprising arrangements shed fresh light on the originals. This is especially true in his very effective settings of Five Negro Spirituals, taken from his 1941 oratorio, "A Child of Out Time," in which Tippett uses them the way Bach used Lutheran chorale melodies as anchors in his...
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