{"id":14181,"date":"2013-07-31T07:40:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T12:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=14181"},"modified":"2013-07-31T08:12:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T13:12:49","slug":"album-reissue-wonderful-elektra-womens-choir-of-vancouver-animates-choral-music-of-josef-rheinberger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/07\/31\/album-reissue-wonderful-elektra-womens-choir-of-vancouver-animates-choral-music-of-josef-rheinberger\/","title":{"rendered":"Album reissue: Wonderful Elektra Women’s Choir of Vancouver animates choral music of Josef Rheinberger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elektra09\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Seven months after the death of Vancouver choral leader Diane Loomer, the German label Carus has released a beautiful Elektra Women’s Choir<\/a> recording that she and co-founder Morna Edmundson led of sacred choral works by Josef Rheinberger.<\/p>\n

Carus gets the composer’s dates completely wrong on the album and the booklet as 1678-1741, when they really were 1838-1901.<\/p>\n

The Electra Women’s Choir, soprano soloist Lorraine Reinhardt, harpist Rita Costanzi and organist Bryn Nixon, on the other hand, got the sound and the feel of this quintessentially Romantic music just right at Vancouver’s Ryerson United Church over two recording sessions in 1998 and 1999.<\/p>\n

\"rheinberger\"<\/a>The six works\/collections on the album are Three Latin Hymns<\/em> (published in 1876), How Lovely are Thy Dwellings<\/em>, from 1865, a Mass setting in E-flat Major from 1888 and Six Hymns<\/em> for two soprano voices, from 1880.<\/p>\n

All the music was written specifically for women’s voices. Rheinberger treats them with a limpid grace, causing the semless blend of sopranos and altos to float weightlessly in the air — an effect made possible by Loomer and Edmundson’s\u00a0fine leadership.<\/p>\n

Although Rheinberger is a master at colouring the music to suit the text, listening to the album in one sitting reveals a lot of repetition in Rheinberger’s compositional toolbox — kind of like looking at a series of paint-by-numbers canvases.<\/p>\n

After the first few minutes, Rheinberger’s predictable harmonic progressions and love of canon-focused fugal writing became a bit tedious to my occasionally jaded sensibilities.<\/p>\n

But, perhaps broken up into a larger playlist, these fine little pieces of 19th century musical Delikatessen — combined with the Elektra choir’s finely polished performances — can earn the appreciation they deserve.<\/p>\n

You’ll find all the album details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To give you a taste of Rheinberger’s aesthetic, here is an 1897 Mass setting for women’s voices dedicated to the memory of Johannes Brahms, performed reasonably well by the women’s voices of the Helmstedter Chamber Choir in Germany last summer:<\/p>\n