SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart & Marcus Creed – France (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:10:07 minutes | 656 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SWR Classic
French intellectuals, especially musicians and writers, were enchanted by the magic of Richard Wagner’s music, but they earnestly wanted to pursue new ideas for what might follow. They believed that music and art should be free from ‘German elements’ and they consequently wanted to establish a decidedly contrasting, French style of music. It was for this reason that Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns set up the Societé Nationale de Musique in 1871, tasking it with supporting new French compositions. Successive composers were fascinated by new developments in the great French music tradition and experimented with modal alternatives and aspects of counterpoint. Compositional clarity was expected to express the simple but poetic relationship between music and text, drawing on graceful melodic lines and a Renaissance-like serenity of expression.
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SWR Vokalensemble & Marcus Creed – Holliger: Die Jahreszeiten (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 20:01 minutes | 181 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SWR Classic
Heinz Robert Holliger (born 21 May 1939) is a Swiss virtuoso oboist, composer and conductor. Celebrated for his versatility and technique, Holliger is among the most prominent oboists of his generation. His repertoire includes Baroque and Classical pieces, but he has regularly engaged in lesser known pieces of Romantic music, as well as his own compositions.
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SWR Vokalensemble & Marcus Creed – Baltikum (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:15 minutes | 614 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SWR Classic
The folk music of the Baltic peoples can be traced back to pagan times whereas the development of their art music did not start until around 100 years ago. Every country has its own founding fathers where music is concerned: the Estonians admire Heino Eller and the Latvians Jazeps Vitols as the founder of their respective national music culture. Arvo Part was one of Eller’s students. The founding figure of Lithuanian art music and art is Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, who created fugues and sonatas as well as symphonic poems, music for piano, and choral works. This is the ninth and last installment of the SWR Vokalensemble series dedicated to musical portraits of different countries and the last release with its chief conductor Marcus Creed. The SWR Vokalensemble is internationally renowned as one of the best choirs for modern a cappella repertoire, its performances are characterized by exquisite mastership.
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SWR Vokalensemble & Marcus Creed – Wolfgang Rihm: Sieben Passions-Texte für sechs Stimmen (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 27:19 minutes | 238 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SWR Classics
Die Uraufführung der Passions-Texte were also premiered at the same time as Vigilia, a work that supplements the seven passion texts with instrumental interludes. In the last piece “voices and instruments unite in a request for forgiveness.” (Clemens Goldberg). Members of the musikFabrik ensemble joined the vocal ensemble Singer Pur. Stefan Asbury conducted. The total duration is 65′.
Wolfgang Rihm completed his DEUS PASSUS Passion pieces after Luke in 2000. When the vocal ensemble Singer Pur asked him for a cappella music for Holy Week, the composer initially hesitated. He would rather “das Mönchsgewand wieder ablegen”. But then he felt so drawn to the project that he set about setting the seven selected texts to music straight away.
Read more![Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Marcus Creed - Kodály & Ligeti: Choral Works (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/04/05/fav0sr2bdp9xc_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Marcus Creed – Kodály & Ligeti: Choral Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 50:28 minutes | 1,60 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © OUR Recordings
This recording offers the unity of two generations; generations that respectfully challenge each other, providing two views on traditional Hungarian vocal folklore. Este, the first choral work composed by Kodaly, is in keeping with the impressionist language that was in style at the time. After the First World War, feeling the urgency to preserve Hungarian heritage, the composer (with the help of Béla Bartók) collected over 3,000 melodies and wrote choral arrangements for them. The result features incredible pieces such as Esti Dal and Mátra Pictures, a monumental a cappella which perfectly captures the spirit of folk literature, recounting village life in the mountains.
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SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, Marcus Creed – Anton Bruckner – Mass in E Minor / Motets (2008)
SACD ISO: 3,64 GB (Stereo + MCH DSD) | FLAC @ 24bit/88.2kHz: 1,04 GB | Full Artwork | 5% Rec. Info
Label/Cat#: hänssler CLASSIC # SACD 93.199 | Country/Year: Germany 2008
Genre: Classical | Style: Sacred, Vocal, Romantic
Review by James Leonard
Can there ever be too many recordings of Bruckner’s sacred music? For fans of the Austrian romantic mystic, the answer is no. After all, how could there be too many recordings of some of the most honest, most devotional, and most inspired spiritual music of the second half of the nineteenth century? And for them, this disc with Marcus Creed leading the SWR Stuttgart Vokalensemble in a selection of seven motets plus the E minor Mass will be a blessing. As listeners who have followed Creed’s career know, he is a skillful choral conductor able to draw musically balanced but emotionally affecting performances from his singers, and this Bruckner recording proves no less impressive than his classic Brahms recordings. In the a cappella motets, Creed sculpts the Stuttgart choir’s performances into warm-hearted hymns to God while in the wind band accompanied mass he creates a flowing five-movement monument to his Catholic faith. Older listeners may miss the spiritual passion that the great Eugen Jochum brought to these works in his classic Deutsche Grammophon recordings, but younger listeners will surely welcome not only Creed’s smoother performances, but Hänssler’s amazingly clean, digital sound. allmusicguide