Release Date: 01 April 2008
Label: Hyperion Records Ltd
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 034571176017
Description
The Holst Singers are acclaimed as one of England’s greatest amateur choirs. The talent and commitment of the individual singers and the leadership of their mercurial conductor, Stephen Layton, ensure that their performances are always of the very highest standards.
Veljo Tormis is—along with Arvo Part—Estonia’s most famous living composer, holding an almost mystic status in his home country. He is also the passionate and practical torch-bearer for folk-singing revival, and the integration of an ancient cultural inheritance into thoroughly modern, post-Soviet lives. Interestingly, he trained at the Moscow conservatoire and was steeped in Soviet instruction during his early musical life. His music is almost all written for choirs; few composers have ever been so committed to one genre. Tormis’s choral specialism marks him out from Bartok, Kodaly, Vaughan Williams and Grainger, whose pioneering interest in folksong was ultimately less purist given their use of the tunes alone in instrumental or orchestral works: for Tormis, the words and the music are inseparable.
The Holst Singers have recently been invited to Estonia to perform Tormis’s music—a great honour, and a mark of their mastery of the repertoire.
Tracklisting
Mahan Esfahani
The Binchois Consort / Andrew Kirkman
Mishka Rushdie Momen
The Gesualdo Six / Owain Park
Takacs Quartet
Simon Callaghan, Sinfonieorchester St Gallen
Cinquecento
Andrey Gugnin
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
Stephen Layton: Holst Singers
