Our series of “New Voices, New Recordings” on Choral Showcase continues this weekend with Requiem music: Lux Aeterna, “Eternal Light,” with two settings from two very different composers. György Ligeti (1923-2006) was a Hungarian-Austria composer whose music – much of it, for voices – is both uncompromising and endlessly fascinating. He called his style “micropolyphony,” meaning multiple lines of concentrated canons, all moving at different tempos and rhythms, creating a haunting, otherworldly effect. Not surprisingly, the late film auteur Stanley Kubrick used Ligeti’s music in two of his most notable films: 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Shining. You can hear it for yourself in Lux Aeterna (which was used in 2001: A Space Odyssey for the scenes with the Monolith). Our new performance comes from an album by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble led by Marcus Creed on Our Recordings.
Morten Lauridsen has written a number of very successful choral works that have caught on with singers and the public alike. His Lux Aeterna was composed in 1997 as a requiem for his mother. Sonically and thematically, it shares the same atmosphere as the Requiems of both Fauré and Brahms, with the same message of comfort and consolation for the grieving. We’ll hear a performance from a DG recording celebrating Lauridsen’s 75th birthday, as Nicol Matt directs the Chamber Choir of Europe with I Virtuosi Italiani.
Eternal Music is the name of the latest album by Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. Devoted to choral music from Iceland, it features a cappella choral works from contemporary Icelandic composers, one of whom, Sigurdur Saeversson, composed a Requiem in 2016. If we have time (and I’m sure we will), we’ll explore a few more a cappella compositions from Iceland on this fascinating recording from harmonia mundi.
Please join me for Choral Showcase, this Sunday evening at 9.
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