Latvian Radio Choir, Sigvards Klava - Bernat Vivancos: Requiem (2015) 2CDs

Catalan composer Bernat Vivancos's 'Blanc', released by Neu Records in 2013, was an acclaimed double album of premiere recordings by the Latvian Radio Choir, one of the world's finest chamber choirs, conducted by Sigvards Klava. This follow-up reunites the composer with these forces in a performance of his profound Requiem.

The renowned musician Jordi Savall first encountered - and was greatly moved by - Vivancos's music through 'Blanc'. He says: "The innovative richness of the works by Bernat Vivancos are, I believe, the clearest and most striking proof of the vitality of a new musical Renaissance. His extraordinary talent and his profound spirituality are placed at the service of a process that is the invention of a new language which, in spite of its complexity and modernity, is capable of transmitting to us pure beauty and emotion."

Vivancos composed his Requiem - scored for mixed choir, soloists, cello soloist (here Pau Codina), cello quartet, accordion and percussion - in memory of his father. He describes its ethos: "Requiem, 'rest' in Latin, is a song of contemplation of life, death and transcendence. For the structure of this 'Requiem', I did not wish to follow the texts that have been incorporated into the Catholic liturgy in the last centuries. The idea is that this prayer should be new, without linking it to any previously established canon. It is intended to be a luminous meditation on transcendence, in which a selection of open, plural texts and reflections responds to a non-confessional vision of the end of human existence."

The project was recorded (in Riga in September 2015) in 3D format (5.4.1) for sound installations, in close collaboration with the composer, placing the listener in the centre of a circle of singers in the poly-choral works. This physical edition includes 2 CDs, a 60 page-book - beautifully designed and manufactured - with liner notes by Maestro Jordi Savall, and a voucher code to download the HD version of the album in stereo and 5.1 surround formats.

One of the leading professional choral groups in Europe, the Latvian Radio Choir, founded in 1940, has been led by Sigvards Klava and Kaspars Putnins since 1992. Its repertoire embraces the Renaissance era and contemporary music, and it has made more than 50 discs for labels like Ondine, Naïve, BIS, GB Records, Aurora and ECM New Series (the award-winning recording of Arvo Pärt's 'Adam's Lament').

There can’t be many settings of the Requiem which use an accordion. This one does, for two of its eight movements: in ‘Souffle ta bougie’ the instrument (played by Arturs Noviks) is the small, etiolated light in the nocturnal forest of Denis Diderot’s text; in the brief epilogue, it is a shred of hope, a gentle gesture of resurrection.

Bernat Vivancos describes his Requiem as ‘a luminous meditation on transcendence’, and for most of its near 100-minute duration the piece is firmly tonal, with a timeless quality clearly linking to the Renaissance, Victoria in particular. Its slow basic pulses and restrained dynamics can be mesmeric, but impatience is another possible reaction: the 22 minutes it takes to set the Beatitudes will stretch many listeners, although the richly blended part-writing and superlative sound quality are constantly beguiling.

The tubular bells and soaring vocalise of soprano Iveta Romancāne in ‘O Virgo Splendens’ provide welcome timbral variety, as does the spectral, jittering quartet of cellos in ‘Lasciatemi morire’, where Monteverdi’s famous madrigal is memed in ghostly fashion. The eight-part writing in the concluding ‘Lux Perpetua’ glows and ripples in this excellent performance, the Latvian Radio Choir tirelessly sustaining pitch and tonal focus through lengthy musical paragraphs.

The packaging deserves a mention – the basic CD issue includes a code enabling free download of Vivancos’s score and high-resolution audio files of the performance, including a 5.1 surround sound version. It’s a model of what such things should be, yet too rarely are at present.

Review by Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine

Pau Codina, cello solo
Iveta Romancāne, Ieva Ezeriete, sopranos
Ēriks Kiršfelds, Dārta Svētiņa, Madara Norbūte, Emma Aleksandra Bandeniece, cello quartet
Artūrs Noviks, accordion
Ivo Krūskops, percussion

Latvian Radio Choir
Sigvards Kļava, conductor

Tracklist:

CD1:

01. Aeternam (9:25)
02. Les Beatitudes (22:00)
03. L'amour, le temps (3:43)
04. O Virgo Splendens (12:55)
05. Lasciatemi morire (14:49)

CD2:

01. Souffle ta bougie (12:31)
02. O Lux Beata (10:58)
03. Lux Perpetua (11:31)