Les chansons des roses – Review by Laudate Magazine
“The programme on this CD is certainly diverse, and fascinating – and it shows excellence of sound and style throughout.”
22nd January 2025
Les chansons des roses – Review by Laudate Magazine
“The programme on this CD is certainly diverse, and fascinating – and it shows excellence of sound and style throughout.”
22nd January 2025
Listen or buy this album:
Jervaulx Singers are an impressive new octet founded by Charlie Gower-Smith and Jenny Bianco (one of the sopranos). They are, to quote from the biographical note, ‘a leading soloists’ choir, combining choral music with song and opera to create exciting and diverse programmes that thrill and delight audiences…See more at jervaulxsingers.com .’
The programme on this CD is certainly diverse, and fascinating – and it shows excellence of sound and style throughout. The disc is named after one of two extended items, Les chansons des roses (1993) by Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943, and widely known for his ‘O magnum mysterium’). His work here consists of settings of five poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) which have been given new prominence by Lauridsen’s characteristically sensitive musical treatment. The first four songs are unaccompanied, while in the fifth (‘Dirait-on’) the singers are joined by Alison Frances Gill (piano).
Balancing the diversity of this disc in terms of styles and nationalities of composers is a ‘musical journey, where each work flows from one to the next…a celebration of nature and the human voice’ (introductory note to the CD). Although this is not explicitly remarked upon, all composers are or were active in the 20th and/or 21st centuries: in order of appearance, Ola Gjeilo; Onute Narbutaite; Lili Boulanger; Sergei Rachmaninoff; Morten Lauridsen; Francis Poulenc; Jonathan Dove, and Leonard Bernstein. The programme notes provide English translations for all texts in other languages.
Track 1 is an arrangement by Gjeilo (b. 1978) of a traditional Norwegian melody. The religious text (originally Swedish, but sung here in a Norwegian translation of 1914) begins (in English) as ‘No one seeking eternal peace can attain it easily’ and ends ‘Have patience, o soul, then you may enter the kingdom of Heaven.’ The text is used as a hymn in Norway, which may be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKdXv4dW-aQ
‘Vasara’ (‘Summer’) (1991) was composed by the Lithuanian Onute Narbutaite (b. 1956). The text is her own: ‘she evokes a feeling of dawn in the woods with vocalisations like tak, tuk, trr, u-u and cik’. The Jervaulx Singers clearly enjoy the opportunity for virtuosity which such extended techniques provide.
‘Summer’ leads logically to a secular hymn to the sun (‘Hymne au soleil) for choir and piano by Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), the French text by Casimir Delavigne (1793–1843). It is good to hear one of the fairly few pieces that Lili Boulanger was able to produce in her short life (in the present case at age 19) – what a loss to early 20th-century music was her very early demise.
The opening bars of this work for SATB and piano are provided inside the digipack (the ecologically-friendly format now regularly adopted by Convivium Records) – with a ‘3e main’ (third hand) on the piano required in the opening bars, possibly overdubbed by Alison Frances Gill?
The quotation alerts us to the prominence of parallel triads in large parts of this work (see bars 5–6). The piano part from bar 5 (although not shown in the quotation) has much use of powerful eight-part parallel triads in root position; at ‘Couronné de splendeur’ in particular there are some wonderful cross (or ‘false’) relations. Listeners may like to compare and contrast the parallelism here with Debussy’s or Vaughan Williams’s.
From bar 5 the Dorian mode on E is used, the C sharps brightening the very minor, even slightly grim, effect of bars 1–4. E major (which was perhaps the ‘obvious’ thing from the start in a piece about the sun) appears later, followed by more tonal adventures before E minor returns for a recapitulation. There is some more E major near the end. The final piano chord is a bare fifth (E plus B) – ambiguous perhaps, although the keen ear will supply the ‘hidden’ major third harmonic.
Rachmaninoff’s ‘Lilacs’ from the 12 Romances (Op. 21) and Poulenc’s ‘Fleurs’ (from Fiançailles pour Rire), two piano solos, are heard on either side of the Lauridsen songs, and provide a pleasant contrast.
Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year is a piece of outstanding quality, at times challenging for listeners and singers, but throughout excellently sung with superb diction. Dove sets seven English poems (by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and Alfred, Lord Tennyson). The poems trace the progress of the year from Spring through to ‘Ring out, wild bells’ (with the line ‘The year is dying in the night’); but this is more than just a ‘calendar piece’, as is particularly clear when we hear Nashe’s solemn ‘Adieu! Farewell earth’s bliss’ with its refrain ‘I am sick, I must die – Lord, have mercy on us!’
Textures are very varied, often busy and frequently dramatic and exciting. The bell sounds of ‘Ring out, wild bells’ are very effective; there is a wonderful quiet moment near the end.
It was very effective to place the weight of ‘The Passing of the Year’ almost at the end of the recording, with Bernstein’s ‘Make our Garden Grow’ from Candide as a substantial but somewhat lighter closing item. The final verse brings together the ‘full company’ with, modestly: ‘We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; / We’ll do the best we know. / We’ll build our house, and chop our wood, / And make our garden grow.’
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Jervaulx Singers are an impressive new octet founded by Charlie Gower-Smith and Jenny Bianco (one of the sopranos). They are, to quote from the biographical note, ‘a leading soloists’ choir, combining choral music with song and opera to create exciting and diverse programmes that thrill and delight audiences…See more at jervaulxsingers.com .’
The programme on this CD is certainly diverse, and fascinating – and it shows excellence of sound and style throughout. The disc is named after one of two extended items, Les chansons des roses (1993) by Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943, and widely known for his ‘O magnum mysterium’). His work here consists of settings of five poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) which have been given new prominence by Lauridsen’s characteristically sensitive musical treatment. The first four songs are unaccompanied, while in the fifth (‘Dirait-on’) the singers are joined by Alison Frances Gill (piano).
Balancing the diversity of this disc in terms of styles and nationalities of composers is a ‘musical journey, where each work flows from one to the next…a celebration of nature and the human voice’ (introductory note to the CD). Although this is not explicitly remarked upon, all composers are or were active in the 20th and/or 21st centuries: in order of appearance, Ola Gjeilo; Onute Narbutaite; Lili Boulanger; Sergei Rachmaninoff; Morten Lauridsen; Francis Poulenc; Jonathan Dove, and Leonard Bernstein. The programme notes provide English translations for all texts in other languages.
Track 1 is an arrangement by Gjeilo (b. 1978) of a traditional Norwegian melody. The religious text (originally Swedish, but sung here in a Norwegian translation of 1914) begins (in English) as ‘No one seeking eternal peace can attain it easily’ and ends ‘Have patience, o soul, then you may enter the kingdom of Heaven.’ The text is used as a hymn in Norway, which may be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKdXv4dW-aQ
‘Vasara’ (‘Summer’) (1991) was composed by the Lithuanian Onute Narbutaite (b. 1956). The text is her own: ‘she evokes a feeling of dawn in the woods with vocalisations like tak, tuk, trr, u-u and cik’. The Jervaulx Singers clearly enjoy the opportunity for virtuosity which such extended techniques provide.
‘Summer’ leads logically to a secular hymn to the sun (‘Hymne au soleil) for choir and piano by Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), the French text by Casimir Delavigne (1793–1843). It is good to hear one of the fairly few pieces that Lili Boulanger was able to produce in her short life (in the present case at age 19) – what a loss to early 20th-century music was her very early demise.
The opening bars of this work for SATB and piano are provided inside the digipack (the ecologically-friendly format now regularly adopted by Convivium Records) – with a ‘3e main’ (third hand) on the piano required in the opening bars, possibly overdubbed by Alison Frances Gill?
The quotation alerts us to the prominence of parallel triads in large parts of this work (see bars 5–6). The piano part from bar 5 (although not shown in the quotation) has much use of powerful eight-part parallel triads in root position; at ‘Couronné de splendeur’ in particular there are some wonderful cross (or ‘false’) relations. Listeners may like to compare and contrast the parallelism here with Debussy’s or Vaughan Williams’s.
From bar 5 the Dorian mode on E is used, the C sharps brightening the very minor, even slightly grim, effect of bars 1–4. E major (which was perhaps the ‘obvious’ thing from the start in a piece about the sun) appears later, followed by more tonal adventures before E minor returns for a recapitulation. There is some more E major near the end. The final piano chord is a bare fifth (E plus B) – ambiguous perhaps, although the keen ear will supply the ‘hidden’ major third harmonic.
Rachmaninoff’s ‘Lilacs’ from the 12 Romances (Op. 21) and Poulenc’s ‘Fleurs’ (from Fiançailles pour Rire), two piano solos, are heard on either side of the Lauridsen songs, and provide a pleasant contrast.
Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year is a piece of outstanding quality, at times challenging for listeners and singers, but throughout excellently sung with superb diction. Dove sets seven English poems (by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and Alfred, Lord Tennyson). The poems trace the progress of the year from Spring through to ‘Ring out, wild bells’ (with the line ‘The year is dying in the night’); but this is more than just a ‘calendar piece’, as is particularly clear when we hear Nashe’s solemn ‘Adieu! Farewell earth’s bliss’ with its refrain ‘I am sick, I must die – Lord, have mercy on us!’
Textures are very varied, often busy and frequently dramatic and exciting. The bell sounds of ‘Ring out, wild bells’ are very effective; there is a wonderful quiet moment near the end.
It was very effective to place the weight of ‘The Passing of the Year’ almost at the end of the recording, with Bernstein’s ‘Make our Garden Grow’ from Candide as a substantial but somewhat lighter closing item. The final verse brings together the ‘full company’ with, modestly: ‘We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; / We’ll do the best we know. / We’ll build our house, and chop our wood, / And make our garden grow.’
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.
