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Артист: BBC Symphony Chorus Альбом: Judith Bingham - Choral Music, 2007 Издатель: Naxos / 8.570346 Жанр: Classical Формат файла: EAC / APE / CUE / LOG Ссылка: CD Нахождение: Torrent

Judith Bingham (b. 1952)

Choral Music



Performers:
Chris Jackson - tenor
Robina Redgard-Siler - soprano

Thomas Trotter - organ



Ensemble:
BBC Symphony Chorus
Fine Arts Brass Ensemble


Conductor:
Stephen Jackson




The British composer Judith Bingham was for several years a member of the BBC Singers and before that the Symphony Chorus, so it is not surprising that choral music makes up a major part of her compositional output. Salt in the Blood is a ghost story based on the legend of a fatal quarrel between two Norwegian sailors over who was the better dancer. Four traditional sea shanties form the backbone of the music, and its text draws from fragments of ships’ log books, the Beaufort Scale, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A 2004 BBC Proms commission, The Secret Garden is a magical and intriguing piece in which Bingham imagines what the Garden of Eden was like after Adam and Eve’s expulsion, and whose central image is the extraordinary synergy that exists between plants and insects. In 2006 Judith Bingham won the British Composer Award for choral music.[/quote]
[quote]All five works on this new disc reveal a distinctive voice writing in a recognizable modern idiom which combines clarity of thought and complexity of vision. Bingham’s music draws audiences in, without alienating them or compromising her expressive integrity. Salt in the Blood (1995) is a prime example, a large musical – at times theatrical - tapestry of British sea-song, weaving in existing shanties and invented hornpipes to retell the tale of two sailors’ rivalry as to who was the better dancer. Bingham thinks convincingly in long spans, as her 2004 Prom commission The Secret Garden confirms (given here in a live performance). First Light (20010) and the brief The Darkness is no Darkness (1993) engage with the English choral tradition to an unusual degree, the latter – a reinterpretation of a Wesley hymn – in particular.
British composer Judith Bingham began her career as a singer and four of the five pieces recorded here are choral, performed by the BBC Symphony Chorus, a group with which she once performed. Bingham's musical language is basically tonal with chromatically enriched harmonies. She writes idiomatically for the voice, but for the most part these pieces seem too long to sustain their musical content; if the composer stated her ideas with more conciseness, the pieces might be highly attractive, but as is, they seem distended and wear out their welcome before they're over. This is particularly true in Salt in the Blood, a 20-minute ghost story for chorus that features sea shanties and hornpipes. The Secret Garden, "a Botanical Fantasy," for chorus and organ with a text by the composer, raises the intriguing metaphysical question: what happened to the Garden of Eden after the expulsion of the Man and Woman? Did it disappear or does it continue to exist somewhere? It's the most striking piece on the CD, with clearly differentiated sections, atmospheric text setting, and textural variety, but here, too, some judicious editorial pruning would have strengthened the work. The BBC Symphony Chorus, conducted by Stephen Jackson with organist Thomas Trotter and the Fine Arts Brass, gives the pieces a solid performance.



Tracklist:

01. Salt in the Blood
02. The Darkness is No Darkness - segue - S. S. Wesley: Thou Wilt Keep Him in Perfect Peace
03. First Light
04. The Snows Descend
05. The Secret Garden


MORE INFO:
naxos.com
allmusic.com
barnesandnoble.com
cduniverse.com
arkivmusic.com

This post has been edited by kgkk on 06-09-2007, 00:46