Judith Weir reviews
This Day – Celebrating a century of British women’s right to vote
Violin Muse: Mitchell performs new commissions
Contemporary Marian Motets: The Marian Consort performs Music for the Queen of Heaven
This is the Marian Consort’s eighth CD for Delphian, and just the second time that it has ventured beyond the Renaissance repertoire which made its reputation, into the realm of contemporary and 20th-century composers. |
Weir
The bright, jangling soundworld of Judith Weir’s All the Ends of the Earth immediately cleanses the aural palate: gleaming divided sopranos, structural punctuation from the tenors and basses, and tinkling tuned percussion transmit the joyful celebration of the natural world in the Psalm-based text. The tactic of writing lavish passages of fioritura for the upper voices is possibly overdone a little, though these are managed buoyantly by the singers.
Weir: The Vanishing Bridegroom
Premiered in 1990, Judith Weir’s remarkable second opera has waited for nearly a quarter of a century to be recorded. Fortunately this 2008 concert performance does more than justice to a work which, if anything, manages to surpass the deft brilliance of Weir’s earlier A Night at the Chinese Opera. A serious tour de force in technical and dramatic terms, The Vanishing Bridegroom brims with moments where the level of atmospheric storytelling is mesmerising.
Weir: Choral music