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Product Description
Paul MEALOR (b.1975)
STABAT MATER
1-4. Stabat Mater
5-7. Let Fall the Windows of Mine Eyes
8-10. Between Eternity and Time
11. Beata Es, Virgo Maria
12. Lux Benigna
13-15. Ave
Irene Drummond - soprano
Drew Tulloch - piano
Con Anima Chamber Choir
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Review by Alan Cooper, critic for the Glasgow Herald and other Scottish newspapers:
With the release of his Stabat Mater, the young Welsh composer Paul Mealor becomes securely established as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary British music. Here he proves himself a remarkably gifted choral director too. In this superb recording he moulds Con Anima Chamber Choir into his own ardent musical instrument.
The CD starts with the work which provides its title: a radiant four movement setting of the Stabat Mater. Both Mealor and Con Anima have collaborated closely with American choral composer Morten Lauridsen in performances of his music. Mealor's writing always upholds its individuality without compromise, but his glorious harmonic scoring shares Lauridsen's pastel shaded warmth that goes to its very heart as well as to that of the listener. The four highly individual movements are ingeniously linked together to produce a convincingly homogenous whole. The third movement makes a deliberate nod in the direction of Carl Orff while the entry of piano and especially the soprano soloist injects immediacy and vulnerable humanity into Mealor's affecting vision of the Holy Mother beneath the cross.
The crystalline beauty of the choral writing in Let Fall the Windows of Mine Eyes, a binding together of three Shakespearean texts was for me the ultimate gem of this recording, as good as anything written for unaccompanied chorus by any other British composer. Here Mealor adds the merest touch of Elizabethan flavour to his own voice. The result is positively awesome.
A piano score built from notes of cut crystal played by Drew Tulloch and ice-pure singing from Irene Drummond capture the aura inside the strange solitary mind of Emily Dickinson. Between Eternity and Time is a short solo song cycle which brings together three of her poems. As in the Shakespeare settings there is an echo of Elizabethan elegance as well as an undercurrent of passion that throughout the strange hermetic life of this American poetess lay smouldering beneath a blank-faced impassive exterior.
Beata Es, Virgo Maria brings us back to the warm hearted vocal textures of the outer movements of the Stabat Mater only with still more expansive harmonies while Lux Benigna with piano accompaniment takes the soaring clarity of the solo songs and transplants it into Mealor's choral writing.
Finally to complete the recording - and these last pieces seem to have been recorded with more echo- we are in the world of Grand Cathedral Music with Ave Verum Corpus. Ave maris stella has just a hint of Mealor's Welsh background and here I am thinking about William Matthias. Then the final Ave Maria gives us the full measure of that glowing Mealor warmth of sound once again.
With the release of his Stabat Mater, the young Welsh composer Paul Mealor becomes securely established as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary British music. Here he proves himself a remarkably gifted choral director too. In this superb recording he moulds Con Anima Chamber Choir into his own ardent musical instrument.
The CD starts with the work which provides its title: a radiant four movement setting of the Stabat Mater. Both Mealor and Con Anima have collaborated closely with American choral composer Morten Lauridsen in performances of his music. Mealor's writing always upholds its individuality without compromise, but his glorious harmonic scoring shares Lauridsen's pastel shaded warmth that goes to its very heart as well as to that of the listener. The four highly individual movements are ingeniously linked together to produce a convincingly homogenous whole. The third movement makes a deliberate nod in the direction of Carl Orff while the entry of piano and especially the soprano soloist injects immediacy and vulnerable humanity into Mealor's affecting vision of the Holy Mother beneath the cross.
The crystalline beauty of the choral writing in Let Fall the Windows of Mine Eyes, a binding together of three Shakespearean texts was for me the ultimate gem of this recording, as good as anything written for unaccompanied chorus by any other British composer. Here Mealor adds the merest touch of Elizabethan flavour to his own voice. The result is positively awesome.
A piano score built from notes of cut crystal played by Drew Tulloch and ice-pure singing from Irene Drummond capture the aura inside the strange solitary mind of Emily Dickinson. Between Eternity and Time is a short solo song cycle which brings together three of her poems. As in the Shakespeare settings there is an echo of Elizabethan elegance as well as an undercurrent of passion that throughout the strange hermetic life of this American poetess lay smouldering beneath a blank-faced impassive exterior.
Beata Es, Virgo Maria brings us back to the warm hearted vocal textures of the outer movements of the Stabat Mater only with still more expansive harmonies while Lux Benigna with piano accompaniment takes the soaring clarity of the solo songs and transplants it into Mealor's choral writing.
Finally to complete the recording - and these last pieces seem to have been recorded with more echo- we are in the world of Grand Cathedral Music with Ave Verum Corpus. Ave maris stella has just a hint of Mealor's Welsh background and here I am thinking about William Matthias. Then the final Ave Maria gives us the full measure of that glowing Mealor warmth of sound once again.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
First of all this is not one of the musical genres I would normally collect. I chanced upon some of the pieces from this cd when they were played at a special church service held in St Machar Cathedral in Aberdeen, Scotland in December 2009. I found the pieces used during that service extremely soothing, creating a poweful existential 'moment' of peace, solace, and clarity of reflection. I suspected that the strength of the evoked mood would have also been significantly triggered in large part by the collaboration with the other key elements : the Service content and the strong sense of spirituality emanating from the very stonework, fabric and construct of St Machar Cathedral itself. However, I have found that the pieces alone have the power and emotion to move me in this way and transport me to a very spiritual and reflective mind state time after time.....I do not have the exposure and experience to comment/review competently on any academic technical aspects of the writing or the delivery ...but on the basis of some limited Purcell experience and as a 'lay' listener I would rate this cd as highly recommended ...a spiritual and existential transport.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Accidentally caught the royal wedding and was hugely taken by Mealor's piece. Searched and found this. It's wonderful. I'm no royalist or wedding buff. Just wallow in it!
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