Image: ©️ Kitfox Valentin / ECM
The latest album from Vox Clamantis and their director Jaan-Eik Tulve is a collection of psalms and folk-songs arranged for choir by the Estonian composer Cyrillus Kreek. The fourteen-voice choir is joined by three instrumentalists, two on nyckelharpa, a keyed, Swedish viol de gamba, and one on kannel, an Estonian version of the psaltery.
Creek’s folk song settings are purely choral, and so are generally performed without instrumental accompaniment; here on the other hand, nyckelharpist Marco Ambrosini has lovingly composed or re-imagined instrumental introductions and narratives for the songs. For instance, in “While Great is Our Poverty” and “From Heaven Above,” the instruments introduce the theme and set a wonderfully reflective mood. Later, in “Awake My Heart,” joined by percussion they provide a strange dance, somehow at once full of motion but devoid of a sense of consistent meter. Alto Kadri Hunt sings the tune alone at first, and her emotive singing feels almost like a ballad. When the choir enters in turn, it almost feels stilted, though not unpleasantly, so, reminding you just how strange Kreek’s arranging must have felt to those who knew the song he borrowed.
As good as the folk songs are, Kreek’s hymn settings are at the heart of this album. When left to their own devices, the Vox Clamantis singers are devastatingly good. For one thing, they maintain a rich and complex blend throughout the whole album, yet their sound remains pure, limpid and flowing. In album’s first phrase alone, listen to how the altos and sopranos blend: in the low range, there is a rough, robust chest-voice, and in the higher range, a silkier head-voice quality that still has strength behind it. Full-choir textures are equally spectacular. For example, in the first of the Christan Orthodox inspired hymns (second half of track 3), the balance between upper and lower voice brings out the counterpoint in Kreek’s writing. Or, in the doxology of “Bless the Lord My Soul,” (5) the one point in the album where the choir really sings forte, the same balance lets the harmony be truly “blazing,” as the liner notes point out.
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Most impressive, though, is the choir’s great sensitivity around diction, and their ability to produce stunningly long and elegant phrases. “By the Rivers of Babylon” (11) is the prime example of this, a setting of Psalm 137, which returns over and over to the refrain of “Hallelujah!” amidst a larger poem. The tempo and rhythm of their singing is sensitive to the text’s poetry: the opening words of each line almost recitative, the music expanding as it approaches each hallelujah, and then becoming utterly absorbed in the hallelujah itself, seemingly timeless. I would be remiss to not also mention the stellar solo singing by the quartet in “Praise the Name of the Lord” (7). Their voices have acidity and brightness, in contrast with some of the darker and more ethereal tracks. Yet there is expert control of that brightness, and modulation of it to create and release tension.
The album is recorded in Vox Clamantis’ home church (Church of the Transfiguration in Tallinn, Estonia) with first-rate sound quality and a gentle but unobtrusive reverb. The liner essay is insightful and will help newcomers to understand Kreek’s music. All together, this should be a no-brainer purchase for any chorister seeking some diversity in their library. Highly recommended listening.
“The Suspended Harp of Babel”
Cryllus Kreek – Choral music
Marco Ambrosini, Angela Ambrosini – Nyckelharpa
Anna-Liisa Eller – Kannel
Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve – Conductor
ECM records, CD 2620
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