Recent classical albums

Stabat Mater: Manna, Santangelo, Sellitto

Abchordis Ensemble

It’s a shame that, as of this writing, the awkwardly titled (and awkwardly punctuated) YouTube video “Abchordis—‘making of’ Stabat Mater CD—Sony Music—DHM” has only been viewed 1,336 times. It provides not only an overview of the inspiration behind this magnificent collection of previously unpublished 18th-century sacred music but also glimpses of the recording process itself, glimpses accompanied by sounds. Created by nine period-instrument virtuosos and four world-class singers, those sounds evoke nothing so much as the radiant beauty of holy devotion.

Flourishes, Tales and Symphonies: Music for Brass and Organ

Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble

The title promises flourishes, and to that end a Carlyle Sharpe wake-up call called “Flourishes” kick-starts the program. The title also promises tales, hence the excerpts from operas by Verdi (La Traviata) and by Jaromír Weinberger (Schwanda the Bagpiper). Last but not least, the title promises symphonies, which explains Craig Garner’s arrangements of Saint-Saëns and maybe William White’s five-movement The Dwarf Planets. The parts cohere into a whole that feels big without ever feeling heavy. Why, Peter Meechan’s “Velvet Blue” could almost pass for jazz.

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons

Yet another version of the great Austrian Romantic’s final, and unfinished, symphony, and yet another reason to hope that there will be more. Not that this one fails, but the ways in which it succeeds enliven rather than settle the ongoing argument about the meaning of the music Bruckner considered (to quote Aad van der Ven’s erudite liner notes) the “very apotheosis of his art.” A devout Catholic, he dedicated it to the “beloved God.” A gifted composer, he imbued it with a complexity commensurate with his Dedicatee’s infinitely complex nature.

The Deer’s Cry: William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Arvo Part

The Sixteen, Harry Christophers

This album’s primary aesthetic accomplishment is that The Sixteen’s a cappella perfectionism never seems like an end in itself but like ground zero of a great adventure, which is certainly one way to describe any genuine experience of Christian worship. Acutely, yea intensely, sensitive to dynamics, the singers do emotional justice to both the Latin and the English texts. This album’s secondary aesthetic accomplishment: an eternity-simulating timelessness resulting from its masterly sequencing of Tallis’ and Byrd’s Renaissance compositions with those of Pärt circa 1997, 2001, and 2008.

Encore

One can acquaint himself with the early 20th-century upheavals in perception through various means: by studying its psychology (Freud), its science (Einstein), or its paintings (Picasso). But the musically inclined will gravitate toward Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, revolutionaries who used atonality and the 12-tone technique to give the early 20th-century perception upheavals a voice. And no better contemporary interpreter than the French ensemble Quatuor Diotima exists to provide ready access.

Schoenberg/Berg/Webern: Complete Works for String Quartet (Naïve Classique) is a five-disc compilation of Quatuor Diotima’s dedication to guaranteeing that what Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern set out to do remains as vibrant and as viscerally affecting now as it was a century ago. Specifically, to demonstrate that the tensions arising from mankind’s belonging both to time and to eternity can be ordered in such a way as to produce a mysterious beauty, the fathoming of which can reward a lifetime. —A.O.