Tenebrae & Nigel Short – Daylight Declines: Choral Music by Paweł Łukaszewski (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:43 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
2018 Grammy Award nominees Tenebrae perform a new collection of choral works by Polish composer Paweł Łukaszewski.
Born in southern Poland in 1968 in the city of Częstochowa and described by Gramophone as writing “enchanting choral music…beautifully measured phrases, immaculately tailored textures and ingenious use of light and shade to invoke light shining in darkness”, Łukaszewski has secured a place in the forefront of European sacred music with performances throughout the world and his works featuring on over one hundred recordings. He studied at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music, where he still teaches, and is now the Artistic Director and Conductor of Musica Sacra Cathedral Choir in Warsaw.
This collection of sacred choral works bears an easily-discernible cultural link with his Polish predecessors such as Lutosławski and Penderecki, but the influence of Henryk Górecki and the Estonian Arvo Pärt is evident too in the fervent but restrained spiritual aspect of Łukaszewski’s music, and his individual voice never stoops to mere imitation.
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Tenebrae, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Nigel Short – Symphonic Psalms & Prayers (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:26 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
The “symphonic” term in this album’s title is to be taken with a grain of salt: Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (1930) relies on a vast wind section, with only a few cellos and double basses, harp and piano, and no violins nor violas; Schoenberg’sFriede auf Erden (Peace on Earth, 1907) is here given in hits original version for choir a cappella; Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms (1965) only require three trumpets and three trombones in addition to the strings and a rather Broadwayian percussions arsenal. Only the (rare and magnificent) Psalm 23 by Zemlinsky, composed in 1910, uses an almost “normal” orchestra for its time. The album’s symphonic honour is safe! It’s worth noting that Schoenberg’s specular and emotional Friede auf Erden is his last great reasonably tonal work, a masterpiece with a tendency for atonality – although a reasoned atonality, never sought for its own sake – that possesses a considerable expressionistic hue. The BBC Symphony Orchestra accompanies with great delight the phenomenal Tenebrae Choir under the lead of conductor Nigel Short.
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Tenebrae & Nigel Short – A Walk With Ivor Gurney (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:27:32 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Tenebrae and Nigel Short are joined by Aurora Orchestra together with mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and narrator Simon Callow for A Walk with Ivor Gurney, an album celebrating the music of Ivor Gurney whose promising career as a composer was interrupted by World War I. Alongside four pieces of Gurney’s own music are works by his contemporaries, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells. The recording features a new piece by Judith Bingham commissioned by Tenebrae in 2013 for the choir with Dame Sarah Connolly.
Read more![Tenebrae, Christian Forshaw, Nigel Short - When Sleep Comes: Evening Meditations for Voices & Saxophone (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/05/15/ua11nxupbldvb_600.jpg)
Tenebrae, Christian Forshaw, Nigel Short – When Sleep Comes: Evening Meditations for Voices & Saxophone (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:29 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Virtuoso saxophonist Christian Forshaw is joined by a consort of Tenebrae singers, in an ethereal sequence of penitential settings for Passiontide. Combining elements of ancient and modern to stunning effect, Forshaw and Tenebrae bring new colors and context to music by Gibbons, Tallis and Hildegard von Bingen in a series of new arrangements and compositions.
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Tenebrae & Nigel Short – Bach & Macmillan: Motets and Sacred Songs (Live) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:30 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Tenebrae bring their trademark passion and precision to this live performance of music by J. S. Bach and Sir James MacMillan, to be recorded live at Snape Maltings in May 2023. Renowned for their technical difficulty, Bach’s motets are pillars of the choral repertoire, requiring minute attention to detail as well as a full emotional range. Here, Tenebrae performs the three most well-known of the set, culminating in the joyful Singet dem Herrn. Like Bach, Sir James MacMillan has written much of his music for the church, and his settings of the Tenebrae responsories paint a vivid picture of the events of Holy Week. This album also features the premiere recording of I saw Eternity the other night, which MacMillan composed for Tenebrae in 2021 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the London Bach Society.
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Tenebrae & Nigel Short – In Winter’s House: Christmas with Tenebrae (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:28 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Setting the scene for Christmas in an uplifting and inspiring programme of seasonal favourites. “Unaccompanied choral singing comes no better than this – in blend, accuracy, precision and commitment…” (The Guardian)
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