Music for Choir and Solo Violin

JOHN HØYBE (b.1939): Psalm 151, WOLFRAM BUCHENBERG (b.1962): Splendor paterne glorie, KNUT NYSTEDT (1915-2014): Ave Maria, GREGOR HÜBNER (b.1967): Ich rufe zu Gott, VYTAUTAS MIŠKINAS (b.1954): In lectulo meo, OLA GJEILO (b.1978): O Magnum Mysterium.

Description: A most attractive programme of largely consonant, tonal works setting Biblical or religious texts with an emphasis on the prayerful, meditative and uplifting of spirit. The composers all adopt distinct and original harmonic and textural idioms, but having said that there are two basic approaches here; integrating the violin into the choral texture as a kind of sopranissimo voice of præternatural clarity and range (Gjeilo, Buchtenberg, Miškinis - who alternates this with virtuosic accompanimental 'quasi-cadenzas), or treating it as a concertante instrument (everybody else, especially Nystedt, whose piece is virtually a miniature violin concerto for unusual forces). Hübner's choice of Psalm 77's impassioned and fearful supplication to God lends itself to a dramatic dialogue between soloist and choir, while Høybye's setting of a poem by Edward Broadbridge is a lively, somewhat genre-crossing work (folk rubs shoulders with Bach, and elsewhere one is reminded of John Rutter) in a spirited, colloquial contemporary idiom. Ida Beiler (violin), Orpheus Vocal Ensemble; Michael Alber.