ORA Singers & Suzi Digby – Desires (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

ORA Singers & Suzi Digby – Desires (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:21 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

‘The wealth of compositions using the sensuous and highly charged texts of the Song of Songs is incredibly vast and rich. In the course of compiling this recording I re-discovered music that I have known for years, was introduced to pieces I didn’t know existed, and was privileged to commission a couple of works to add to this wonderful legacy of compositional material. Taken as a whole, the collection of pieces gathered here presents a varied and enlightening journey through the book of Song of Songs, and through the musical language of different centuries. I hope that both those that are well known and those that are new discoveries will encourage listeners to delve further into this miraculous repertoire.’ Suzi Digby OBE

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ORA, Suzi Digby – Upheld by Stillness, Gems of Renaissance and Reflections (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

ORA, Suzi Digby – Upheld by Stillness, Gems of Renaissance and Reflections (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:17 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

For their first recording for harmonia mundi UK new signing ORA have chosen to focus on that towering figure of the English music scene, William Byrd.

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ORA, Suzi Digby – Refuge from the Flames, Miserere and the Savonarola Legacy (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

ORA, Suzi Digby – Refuge from the Flames, Miserere and the Savonarola Legacy (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:53 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

It takes a bit of reading of small, brutally lightface, sans serif print to figure out what’s going on here, but once you do, you’re rewarded with a truly superb album of Renaissance and contemporary a cappella choral music that captures what Renaissance singers and hearers would have found significant in the music they heard. There are several interesting aspects to the program, any one of which might be enough to make Refuge from the Flames worth your time and money. It begins with two versions of the old chestnut Miserere, by Gregorio Allegri. But it’s a chestnut no more: the score has been re-edited by Ben Byram-Wigfield, removing familiar features such as the shift of tonal center and the soaring ascent to high C. Wigfield argues in a note that these details are anachronistic, and likely the result of scribal error. Perhaps his conclusions can be debated, but it’s striking how much the work changes in his version. It fits better with what comes next: the Miserere is a setting of Psalm 50, which inspired devotional poetry by the monk and insurgent activist Girolamo Savonarola, who antagonized both the church and secular authority and got himself first excommunicated and then torched for his trouble. The main intent of this album is to explore the significance of Savonarola’s writings for composers. The program builds from a pair of simple, but awesomely powerful, anonymous sacred madrigals to larger pieces of French polyphony by Le Jeune and Verdelot, to Byrd — who saw in Savonarola’s sufferings an analogue to what Catholics were going through in Britain and delivered a profound setting of Savonarola’s Infelix ego — to contemporary composers from Britain and Scandinavia for whom the words of Savonarola continue to resonate. This program situates contemporary a cappella choral pieces in relation to Renaissance music in something beyond simple similarity of texture, and it brilliantly illuminates what a Renaissance motet might have meant in its own time. Throw in emotionally direct, but clean, singing from the 18-member group ORA and fine sound from St. Alban’s church, and really the result is a must-have choral collection.

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ORA – Many are the Wonders (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

ORA – Many are the Wonders (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:31 minutes | 628 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

ORA’s third album release, a collection of works by Thomas Tallis featuring six ORA commissioned reflections by six contemporary composers, will be released in early 2017.

Launched at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, and with an appearance on In Tune, earlier this year, ORA’S third album for harmonia mundi pays tribute to the particular golden age of Thomas Tallis.

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Ora – Advent Calendar (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ora – Advent Calendar (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:45 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Héhé, voilà une idée qu’elle est bonne [Hehe, here’s a good idea], as the much-missed Michel Colucci would say. Instead of piling on pounds eating tasteless chocolates, opening a little cardboard window on an Advent calendar decorated with sickly-sweet drawings, why not open every day from the start of Advent with the a little choral piece? This good idea originates with the excellent British choir ORA, directed by Suzi Digby: twenty-four a capella pieces, almost all of which come from the recent British repertoire, and of which two have been made for (and by) the ensemble. ORA is one of those brilliant choirs from the English speaking world, with 24 high-quality voices, whose aim is to revive, after a fashion, the Renaissance passion for contemporary choral music by the likes of Byrd or Tallis… Hence their modern programmes – contemporary, note, but very much removed from the production-line atonal avant-garde output of the 1970s and 1980s. They work with a list of great British choral composers like Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Holst, Parry, Stanford Berkeley, Finzi, or, more recent still, stars like Rutter or Tavener whose language sometimes approaches jazz or Gospel.

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