Another disc, hot on the heels of the Oxford Pro Musica recording which I review on page 137, linking the music of these three composers in a similarly illuminating way, and with the advantage that very little of the repertoire overlaps.
Unlike the Oxford disc, the contemporary pieces are here separated by soberly sung plainchant (Marian antiphons, music from the Mass of All Saints' Day and funeral chants), which acts as a kind of sorbet to cleanse the palate between the various dishes. The performances of Gorecki's Totus tuus and Amen are technically superb, and can rarely have been sung with such absolute control: similarly Tavener's Funeral Ikos is performed with perfect pacing and tuning. Yet there is something missing: these three pieces do not have that sense of spontaneity they need. They are too polite, perhaps, so that the Gorecki works never quite catch fire, and the Tavener never really moves one.
The response is more convincing, I feel, in the Tavener Collegium Regale canticles, sung with virtuoso flair (after all, they were written for this choir) and the Part Magnificat and The Beatitudes, this latter unavailable on disc until now. Here the performances have just that element of flexibility which is lacking in the other pieces, for all their beauty of sound. Part's intimate austerity (which John Milsom contrasts with the Gorecki in his notes) is well served indeed in the care with which his melodies are shaped and the dynamic levels maintained.
I wonder whether whoever devised the title for this collection knows what an ikos is? For the curious, it is in fact the verse that follows the kontakion between the sixth and seventh canticles of the canon sung at Orthodox matins.'