Search - Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis :: Pupils Of Messiaen: A Cappella Works By Messiaen, Stockhausen And Xenakis / Jorgensen, Danish National Radio Choir

Did you know this Choir?

10/22/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD provides a most beautiful choice of 20th Century music for unacompanied voices. The Danish National Radio Choir is sublime, and if you did not know this group before you will be astonished to know that it exists since 1932. The pieces by Xenakis are extraordinarily dramatic, and especially "Nuits" will justify all prejudices some people have about modernistic hysteria. "Serment" is a setting of the Hippocratic oath mixed with non-verbal sounds such as loud breathing noises (supposed to represent suffering caused by disease). Messiaen's "Cinq rechants" will be appreciated by "world music" enthusiasts because of the Non-European references, especially Peruvian folk songs. The pieces by Stockhausen were composed as academic exercises during his student years, and you should not expect to undergo any kind of avantgardistic experience when listening to them. As in early pieces of other revolutionary composers, e.g. Anton Webern's "Langsamer Satz" (1905), or Luciano Berio's "Petite Suite" (1947), these pieces are absolutely "conventional". However, it is interesting to listen to something by Stockhausen that could be performed by an amateur ensemble."