A Rich Culture Russian music from SWR Vokalensemble - appreciated by HOWARD SMITH '... a gift for those eager to hear voices in chorus ...'

Stuttgart is home to Porsche, Mercedes Benz and Südwestrundfunk Vokalensemble, all three providing a guarantee of authority and excellence.

A recent SWR Vokalensemble CD (Hänssler Classic CD93.306) focused on American composers Copland, Reich, Cage, Feldmann, Bernstein and Barber.

Hard on its heels Hänssler offers a wide range of Russian superpower composers who mastered choral music in the tradition of pre-Revolution Orthodox Churches — a forerunner of nationalist style — Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857), master of theatrical music; Tchaikovsky (1840-1893); Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915); Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and Sofia Gubaidulina (born 1931).

The results are from the nineteenth, twentieth and 21st centuries, bringing romantic nationalist musical settings of the recent past to more markedly expressionist sounds of the two most recent composers: Schnittke's Drei geistliche Gesänge (1984) and Gubaidulina's Hommage à Marina Tsvetayeva (1984)...

RUSSIA

HAENSSLER CLASSIC

ALFRED SCHNITTKE

SERGEI RACHMANINOV

SERGEI TANEYEV

MIKHAIL GLINKA

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

STUTTGART

GERMANY

CHORAL MUSIC