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1. 1000x1000 vuotta
2. Suomen äideille
3. There was... 8 nonsense songs
4. Lohi ui ohi
5. Soi Jumalalle
6. Opeta meille luomista
7. Miksi en laulaisi?
8. Adagio
9. Maalaiskissan salainen kalainen haave
10. Kehtolaulu
11.Väinämöisen perintö
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1. Riu riu chiu
2. Edi beo thu hevene queene
3. Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
4. Vous qui désirez sans fin
5. Une jeune pucelle
6. Joseph est bien marié
7. Verbum caro factum est
8. Brando alta Regina
9. Je suis l’Archange de Dieu
10. Herran ilmestuxesta
11. Soikaa rummut, tamburiinit
12. Où s’en vont ces gais bergers/
Ou Dieu , que n’etois-je en vie
13. Tous les bourgeois de Châtre
14. Entre le bœuf et l’âne gris
15. Psallite
16. Puer natus in Bethlehem
17. Lapsed caick laolacatt
18. Omnis mundus iucudentur/
In dulci jubilo/Caick cansad...
19. Branle l’official
20. Silence Ciel! Silence Terre!
21. Tuikkikaa oi joulut tähtöset
22. Kautta tyynen ja vienon yön
23. Joulun kellot
24. À minuit fut fait un réveil
25. Stella splendens
26. Carol y blwch
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1. Pyhän Fransis Assisilaisen rukous
2. Lorulailee
3. Kiurun tie
4. Tikanpolkka
5. Satakieli
6. Menninkäisen kuutamotanssit
7. Hiihtojuustoa syönyt lehmä tuli
hieman levottomaksi
8. Jaakobin pojat
9. Revontulet
10. Pah´on olla paimenessa I
11. Pah´on olla paimenessa II
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1. Laulu synnyinseudulle
2. Laula Kultani
3. Kissankello
4. Hanget soi
5. Pentin serenadi
6. Metsän huilu
7. Revontulet
8. Ecco
9. Zemer lach
10. Haidschi bumbaidschi
11. Pod nashina okni holka modro oka
12. Det var en lordag aften
13. Y bore glas/ at erly down
14. I ride an old paint
15. Jerekina
16. Bä bä, vita lamm
17. Laul põhjamaas
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Performance: Sonics:
Pekka Kostiainen (b.1944) is perhaps not known as well as other Finnish composers outside his native land. Although he wrote mainly instrumental music early in his career, he now concentrates on choral music. It is common to find that composers are stimulated by finding or developing ensembles to perform their music. Vox Aurea (The Golden Voice) is a mixed-voice children's choir assembled from special music classes of the City of Jyväskylä, Finland, with around 46 talented singers aged 11-17. Pekka Kostiainen is their present conductor and composes extensively for them. Vox Aurea have excelled in performing his demanding but inspiring music, and taking it on their world tours. I was very impressed with their tight ensemble, pure tone and boundless enthusiasm for singing challenging contemporary music, which could put some professional adult choirs to shame.
Kostiainen's style derives from the long tradition of choral singing in countries bordering the Baltic. If you enjoy the choral settings by Greig, you will have no difficulties with Kostiainen; his tonal idiom is relatively moderate and often richly melodic, being influenced greatly by folk music and folklore.
Tuhat kertaa tuhat vuotta (A thousand times a thousand years) is the most substantial a capella work on this 6th disc of Alba's "Kostiainen Conducts Kostiainen" series. It is a setting of a poem by Lauri Viita, one of the central characters of post-World War II literature in Finland, and narrates the origin of the world from an empty Cosmos, the building of mountains, ocean formation and the development of life. Softly vibrating tone-clusters suggest the void, magically expanding into the warm church acoustic, and a variety of eerie vocalisations including clicks, hisses and open-mouth tapping give way to firmer melodic lines. The altos, with more robust tone than the sweet sopranos, intone the verses in a modal runic chant style which derives from the Kalevala, the Finnish National epic, very close to the narrative style used by Sibelius in Kullervo and his epic tone poems. The choir are divided into four groups, two of sopranos and two altos, and the music moves antiphonally across the sound stage, suggesting the dynamic events at hand. This really is a tour-de-force of choral pictorialism, a miniature epic in its own right.
'To Finland's Mothers' is a lively and funny tongue-in-cheek tribute from a child who cannot pronounce his r's (and is therefore untranslatable), exploiting the musicality embedded in the Finnish language and its speech rhythms. Further fun comes in Kostiainen's ingenious settings of 8 nonsense rhymes in the form of limericks by Edward Lear, sung in English. They all begin with "There was a...", and although we loose the characteristic limerick metre, the vocal pictorialism of the chorus and their evident relish of the bizarre situations made me laugh out loud. Also very funny are the poems about fish (an ever-present Finnish preoccupation) by Jukka Itkonen.
Several items with piano accompaniment nicely break up the a capella items, and the concert ends with "Väinämöinen’s legacy", a fine patriotic style melody (verses from the Kalevala), simply harmonised and sung with moving fervour by Vox Aurea, which lingers long in the mind after its final cadence.
Mika Koivusalo's minimal microphone recording is superbly focussed, with a wide stage and a flattering amount of ambience. As well as being able to pinpoint all the various singing devices and rhythmic clapping passing amongst the chorus, the sounds on this disc are superbly musical.
Some of the songs in Finnish do not have full translations, but there are useful English summaries of their contents.
This is one of the most entertaining SACDs I have come across, and it makes an excellent introduction to the art of Pekka Kostiainen and also that of Vox Aurea. It is a tribute to the continuing healthy state of the Finnish choral tradition that Sibelius himself contributed so much to. Unmissable.
Copyright © 2009 John Miller and SA-CD.net
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