Ondine is proud to release its 17th album together with the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Kļava dedicated to a cappella words by Anton Brucker. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) is known as one of the greatest of 19th century symphonists. Yet, also choral music formed an integral part of the composer’s output. This album includes a selection of smaller choral works written between the years 1848 and 1892. Many of these works were long forgotten. Yet after a long stretch on the periphery of the choral world, Bruckner’s motets have now finally returned to a broader consciousness. The Latvian Radio Choir (LRC) ranks among the top professional chamber choirs in Europe and its refined taste for musical material, fineness of expression and vocal of unbelievably immense compass have charted it as a noted brand on the world map. The repertoire of LRC ranges from the Renaissance music to the most sophisticated scores by modern composers; and it could be described as a sound laboratory –the singers explore their skills by turning to the mysteries of traditional singing, as well as to the art of quartertone and overtone singing and other sound production techniques. The choir has established a new understanding of the possibilities of a human voice; one could also say that the choir is the creator of a new choral paradigm: every singer is a distinct individual with his or her own vocal signature and roles in performances.

REVIEW:

It is probably heretical to say so, but I have to confess that I listen to Bruckner’s choral music far more often (and with more satisfaction) than I listen to his symphonies. In part this is because I generally find more delight in the sound of a choir than in that of a symphony orchestra. But another – more important - factor is that the relative brevity of, say, Bruckner’s motets offers the composer less opportunity for the kind of prolixity which, to my mind, is all too common in his symphonies (I feel sure that by now, I shall have offended some readers!).

The ‘concise’ Bruckner is to be found, above all, in his motets. In the symphonies the affirmations of glory and the passages of spiritual radiance have to be discovered amidst very different materials, whereas they permeate every bar of the best of his motets. This, it seems to me, is a context in which that over-used slogan “small is best” really rings true. The thirty-four extant motets by Bruckner were written between 1835 (as an 11/12 year- old) and 1892 (four years before his death). Where Brahms, being a Protestant, found primary inspiration for his motets in those of Bach, the ardent Roman Catholic Bruckner turned to Renaissance polyphony, and to Palestrina in particular, for his models. Bruckner does not seem to have had, at any point, a formal relationship with the Cecilian movement for the reform of church music, but he clearly seems to have shared some of that movement’s important principles – such as the admiration of Palestrina and the belief that the structures of Gregorian chant should be fundamental to church music; Bruckner also shared the Cecilian dislike of over-theatrical church music. Such affinities are evident in motets like ‘Os Justi’, ‘Ave Maria’, ‘Locus iste’ and ‘Tota pulchra es Maria’.

Simple (though some have called it only ‘deceptively simple’) yet sublime, ‘Locus iste’ is a well-nigh perfect example of the motets written by the mature Bruckner, characteristic, that is, of the realization of those Brucknerian/Cecilian principles outlined above. The performance here by the Latvian Radio Choir brings out the distinctive qualities of the piece (and of the choir) – precise yet intense, fervent yet restrained, voices perfectly blended, with the basses wonderfully rich without the vocal balance being disturbed. Under the direction of Sigvards K?ava the result is both prayer-like and exalted, in the certainty of the faith expressed. ‘Locus iste’ was written for the dedication of theVotivkapelle (a beautiful chapel well worth visiting) at the new Cathedral in Linz (the building of which began in 1862). It was written in Vienna during Bruckner’s time as Professor of Harmony and Counterpoint at the Conservatory. It sets a three-line text – “Locus iste a Deo factus est, / inestimabile sacramentum, / irreprehensibilis est.”. (The text is drawn from Genesis 28:16 and Exodus 3:15). Bruckner’s setting begins in quiet calm, but still has a strong sense of confident affirmation. The strength of feeling gradually increases, but Bruckner avoids any sense of the excessively dramatic – the loudest dynamic marking is only mf. Yet, given the quietness around it, this is powerfully effective. Bruckner’s effects, indeed, are achieved very economically, as, when the first line is repeated, one is startled to find that the closing phase (“factus est”) is omitted and its place is taken by a beautiful melisma (the only one in the piece) on the word “Deo”. Lovely as the motet is, its power resides, in part, in what is not done, what is, as it were, held in reserve – a musical strategy which recognizes the divine power by being humble before it.

The use of the idiom of traditional chant – a fondness for which, as suggested earlier, Bruckner shared with the Cecilians – is especially successful in ‘Os Justi’. It is worth noting that this motet is dedicated to Ignaz Traumhiler, Regens Chori at The Abbey of St. Florian and an enthusiastic advocate of the Cecilian movement. As the booklet notes by J?nis Torg?ns observe, “in a feature that is quite striking for this period in Bruckner’s output (c.1875-1885), the piece combines the archaic colours of ancient modes (Lydian, Phrygian, etc.) with his [i.e. Bruckner’s] characteristic harmonic language.” The setting also includes, as Torg?ns points out, a clear allusion to the “‘faith’ motto from Parsifal” and “a marked and extensive fugato”. This, then, is a far more complex piece than ‘Locus iste’, a perfect example of multum in parvo, with so much happening, musically speaking, in a piece that takes little more than four minutes to sing. Such a mixture of ancient and modern in the work of one of our own contemporaries might seem like sophisticated postmodernism; in Bruckner it speaks of the pursuit of an idiom which is ‘outside time’. Put side by side, ‘Os Justi’ and the utter simplicity of Bruckner’s ‘Ave Maria’, and it is very clear how variously Bruckner makes use of the motet form. So, for example, in other motets Bruckner uses Phrygian resources to create pieces which are very much in the spirit of ancient chant, even if they don’t quote it directly – such as ‘Pangelingua et Tantum Ergo’, ‘Tota pulchra es Maria’ and ‘Vexilla Regis’ (all three are discussed in perceptive detail in Anthony F. Carver’s article ‘Bruckner and the Phrygian Mode’ in Music and Letters, 86 (1), 2005, pp.74-99).

Bruckner is, at times, both harmonically and dynamically adventurous in his motets. One vivid example of this is ‘Christus factus est’, in which violent dynamic contrasts (of a sort which Ignaz Traumhiler might not have approved of), such as that between the fff climax at “quod est super omne nomen” and the ppp at the very close of the motet. ‘Virga Jesse’ (written for Traumhiler) is also very dramatic. It begins quietly (p) and ends even more quietly (pp); in between there are several climaxes, each followed by a fermata. The result is highly expressive, a vivid musical embodiment of the emotions of the text – the gradual Virga Jesse floruit – not least in the wonderful closing Alleluia (bars 63-91).

The Kronstorfer Messe – an a cappella setting, minus Gloria and Credo – is an early work, written when Bruckner was a schoolteacher’s assistant in Kronstorf in Upper Austria in his twenties. It makes very clear his attachment to Palestrina – the brief discussion in James Garratt’s Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination (CUP, 2004) is worth reading. It is performed very infrequently and has rarely been recorded. Even in a performance by a high-quality choir such as the Latvian Radio Choir, it isn’t hard to see why. The young Bruckner’s respect for tradition seems to inhibit him and the resulting work is relatively lifeless; it lacks the variety and vitality necessary to bring its four movements (Kyrie-Sanctus-Benedictus-Agnus Dei) fully alive. It is useful to have a well-sung recording of the work available (primarily as an aid to understanding Bruckner’s later development), but I can’t help wishing that the choice had been made to record more of Bruckner’s motets (perhaps ‘Inveni David’ and ‘Afferentur regi - see also below), rather than this pleasant but rather limited work.

The singers of the Latvian Radio Choir impress in every work on this disc. If I have a ‘complaint’ it concerns a matter of omission rather than commission. I very much regret the absence of ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’, a favourite of mine since I first heard it more than 50 years ago.

Hitherto, I have most often turned to recordings of Bruckner’s motets on two Hyperion discs: by the Corydon Singers conducted by Matthew Best (CDA66062) and by Polyphony, directed by Stephen Layton (CDA67629). In future I shall be at least as likely (if not more so) to take this disc from my shelves.

– MusicWeb International (Glyn Pursglove)