Nocturnes

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Product Description ------------------- Morten Lauridsen's choral music performed by Polyphony with Stephen Layton, conductor. Works on this disc include Mid-Winter Songs, Les chansons des roses, I will lift up mine eyes, O come, let us sing unto the Lord, Ave, culcissima Maria, and Nocturnes. Texts are from various poets, including Robert Graves, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda and James Agee. .com ---- Morten Lauridsen's choral music is well-rooted in both early music and Renaissance polyphony, but he is not one of the so-called "holy minimalists" whose very sounds are reminiscent of centuries-old music. He is American and approaches the past as a building block; he may use old techniques but his voice is original, lyrical, and easy to take, without ever seeming simple-minded. He writes so the texts can be understood - here he uses words by Robert Graves, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda and James Agee and throws in some non-secular psalms and a Latin motet, "Ave, dulcissima Maria." This last is a piece of great tranquility scored for male chorus, with a set of finger cymbals played by Lauridsen himself (he plays piano elsewhere on the CD). The group Polyphony, under Stephen Layton, performs all these works with impeccable pitch and diction; the fives poems by Rilke about roses are particularly handsome. He uses vast variations in dynamics almost ochestrally and the effect is marvelous - large crescendos excite and sustained soft singing soothes. There's nothing here that will jar the listener - Lauridsen's dissonances are at the service of the text and are normally quickly resolved. Fans of choral music should know what this composer (born in 1958) is up to - his music is both interesting and sheerly pleasurable. --Robert Levine