After acknowledging the esteemed presence of The Sixteen and guitarist Kaori Muraji on this new Decca CD (an unusual place to find this choir after years on its own label), you look at the program and can’t help wondering, “Just what on earth is this recording for?” Is it a showcase for guitarist Muraji? A way to highlight arrangements by current choral music fave Bob Chilcott? Or is it a Spanish album? But then why the presence of Borodin, Tallis, and (horrors!) Pachelbel? And what does the title “Into the Light” have to do with anything? It’s not just a choral disc, because there are a number of solo guitar tracks (including Tárrega’s famed Recuerdos de la Alhambra); it’s not just about the guitar because we hear Tallis’ “Canon” and a choral arrangement of music from Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances. There are absolutely no liner notes and (unforgivably) no translations of the Spanish songs, so I guess we’re just left to listen and wonder.
Of course, whatever confusion we may experience regarding the point of the programming, we’re not at all disappointed in the singing or the playing–and the many Chilcott arrangements are alternately engaging, inspired, and ingenious. While he gives a few fresh twists and turns to the oft-sung Tallis canon, his “Con amores, la mi madre” (a song by 16th-century composer Juan de Anchieta) is positively gorgeous (with a lovely solo by soprano Grace Davidson), and the concluding Polovtsian Dance (“Stranger in Paradise”, to Kismet fans), with obbligato guitar, captures the original music’s exoticism while cleverly setting it to a text from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Besides accompanying most of the choral selections, Muraji offers excellent solo renditions of the Tárrega and several preludes by Villa-Lobos. Her performance of the Catalan folksong “Canço del lladre” is a highlight. I was most surprised to see on the program the Pachelbel drivel, er, “canon”–a piece I swore years ago never to voluntarily listen to again. I was surprised because once conductor Harry Christophers told me that he flatly refused ever to perform Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G minor because he didn’t consider it good music. Hmmm. Perhaps Chilcott’s arrangement of the “canon”–which sets the music to an Oscar Wilde text, “Requiescat”–confers “good music” status on Pachelbel’s worst piece, but I doubt it.
That aside, fans of The Sixteen, the guitar, Spanish songs and motets, and some really cool choral/guitar arrangements will enjoy this strange but truly entertaining program. I just wonder if the full-page color pictures of the “stars” couldn’t have been sacrificed for a few paragraphs on the music?
