Royal Holloway; Rupert Gough - Calm on the Listening Ear of Night: Choral Works by Rene Clausen & Stephen Paulus (2015)

Posted By: Designol
Date: April 25, 2023

René Clausen & Stephen Paulus: Calm on the Listening Ear of Night (2015)
The Choir of Royal Holloway; Rupert Gough, conductor
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 279 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 181 Mb | Artwork included
Classical, Contemporary, Choral | Label: Hyperion | # CDA68110 | Time: 01:17:22

Stephen Paulus was an astonishingly prolific fixture of the American music scene, with some 600 works to his credit. His sudden death in 2014 left classical music—particularly the worlds of opera and choral music—significantly the poorer, so it’s inevitable that we should see his legacy memorialised with new additions to the catalogue.

Royal Holloway’s ‘Calm on the Listening Ear of Night’ sets Paulus’s music in dialogue with another Midwestern composer, René Clausen. It’s Clausen whose musical personality emerges most strongly here in these precise performances. His works offer a distinctively American spin on the fashionable Baltic sound world of Ešenvalds and Vasks that is as appealing as it is generous. In pace, which opens the disc, offers eight minutes of lushly filmic excess. Plainchant and modal harmonies ground gestures of frank sentimentalism in something more substantial (though this recording lacks the ambient acoustic richness the work cries out for), and with the later A Jubilant Song we get the rhythmic liveliness lacking elsewhere on an album themed around nocturnal calm.

Paulus’s contributions include the multi movement Jesu Carols, a clear nod to Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols with its harp accompaniment (though the carols are set for full voices rather than just upper). Messiaen and Poulenc, rather than Britten, though, are the shadowy presences behind much of the set, particularly the sudden harmonic sideways glances of ‘Waye not his cribb’.

Review by Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone

One of the underreported stories in classical music in the 2000s and especially the 2010s is the penetration of American choral music, especially from the Midwest and still more specifically from Minnesota, into the performing repertoire of choirs in Britain and even continental Europe. Here, from England's venerable Choir of Royal Holloway under Rupert Gough, you get music by one of the most familiar American choral composers, Stephen Paulus, along with one not so familiar to listeners outside the collegiate-choir orbit, René Clausen. Each of these composers shows traces of European styles, incorporated into a distinctly American idiom. Many of the pieces are a cappella, but several have accompaniment by a harp, and the title work (on a 19th century hymn text by Edmund Sears) also includes a violin. The music is written with American college choirs in mind, and the somewhat cleaner top ranges of the Choir of Royal Holloway are all to the good in the chilling soprano divisi passages of a work like Clausen's La lumière (track five). Paulus' music, despite the harp that may suggest Benjamin Britten, has 20th century French accents, while Clausen's limpid harmonies evoke Baltic holy minimalism in a context of typically American warmth. Fans of American choral music will want this release, which has some attractive small pieces by Paulus; total newcomers might start with Eric Whitacre or Morten Lauridsen instead.

Review by James Manheim, Allmusic.com


Stephen Paulus at Allmusic
Stephen Paulus Website
Stephen Paulus at Wiki



René Clausen at Allmusic
René Clausen at Wiki


Tracklist:

René Clausen (b.1953)

01. In pace (8:18)

02. Three Whitman settings - No.3 The last invocation (3:28)

03. A jubilant song (3:46)

04. Nocturnes - No.3 A clear midnight (3:57)

05. La lumière (4:57)

06. Pater noster (4:45)

07. Calm on the listening ear of night (7:25)


Stephen Paulus (1949-2014)

08. Gabriel's message (4:41)

Jesu Carols
09. No.1 Jesu's lyfelyne (2:38)
10. No.2 The ship carol (2:30)
11. No.3 Waye not his cribb (4:02)
12. No.4 The neighbors of Bethlehem (4:11)

13. Arise, my love (6:44)

14. Evensong (6:01)

The Lotus Lovers
15. No.4 Illusions (2:53)
16. No.6 A rich brocade (2:34)

17. The road home (4:34)

Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015

EAC extraction logfile from 5. October 2016, 23:05

Royal Holloway Choir, Rupert Gough / Clausen & Paulus - Choral Works

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foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2017-07-21 19:21:02

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Royal Holloway Choir, Rupert Gough / Clausen & Paulus - Choral Works
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR14 -0.35 dB -21.66 dB 8:18 01-Clausen: In pace
DR16 -1.43 dB -24.68 dB 3:28 02-Clausen: Three Whitman settings - No.3 The last invocation
DR13 -0.30 dB -18.61 dB 3:46 03-Clausen: A jubilant song
DR12 -5.00 dB -23.96 dB 3:57 04-Clausen: Nocturnes - No.3 A clear midnight
DR14 -3.27 dB -22.87 dB 4:57 05-Clausen: La lumière
DR13 -2.87 dB -22.85 dB 4:45 06-Clausen: Pater noster
DR14 -2.87 dB -23.91 dB 7:25 07-Clausen: Calm on the listening ear of night
DR14 -1.22 dB -23.98 dB 4:41 08-Paulus: Gabriel's message
DR14 -0.40 dB -21.94 dB 2:38 09-Paulus: Jesu Carols - No.1 Jesu's lyfelyne
DR13 -0.15 dB -16.68 dB 2:30 10-Paulus: Jesu Carols - No.2 The ship carol
DR14 -8.19 dB -28.50 dB 4:02 11-Paulus: Jesu Carols - No.3 Waye not his cribb
DR14 -0.09 dB -20.23 dB 4:11 12-Paulus: Jesu Carols - No.4 The neighbors of Bethlehem
DR15 -0.13 dB -21.73 dB 6:44 13-Paulus: Arise, my love
DR15 -0.23 dB -22.74 dB 6:01 14-Paulus: Evensong
DR16 -7.19 dB -30.42 dB 2:53 15-Paulus: The Lotus Lovers - No.4 Illusions
DR15 -4.53 dB -25.63 dB 2:34 16-Paulus: The Lotus Lovers - No.6 A rich brocade
DR16 -3.13 dB -25.52 dB 4:34 17-Paulus: The road home
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 17
Official DR value: DR14

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 497 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================


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