Canadian composer Imant Raminsh, Latvian-born and living in Canada since childhood, has had a successful career writing music in the usual genres, but his choral compositions have garnered the most attention. Although Raminsh’s music doesn’t bear any wholly original stamp, it’s invariably approachable, easily accessible to almost any listener, and shows signs of skillful (if inadvertent) stylistic adaptation, from Pärt (the opening of the Missa brevis) to Rutter (Gloria, from Missa brevis) and Britten (Upward going, from Earth Chants). Raminsh’s most interesting writing occurs in the cycle Earth Chants, a set of seven songs (originally titled Along the Flower Trail) for a cappella mixed choir using English translations of texts in the Inuit, Chippewa, Sioux, Nahuatl, Winnebago, Tewa, and Wintu languages. Here he uses very colorful and expressive musical devices–close-interval dissonances and varied rhythmic schemes–to illustrate the words, which range from the all-important subjects of land (“The lands around my dwelling”) to love (“Love Song”) to war (“War Song”).
Unlike Duruflé in his justly famous motet Ubi caritas, Raminsh doesn’t use the actual chant as a cantus firmus; rather he offers an original melody, and it’s a lovely, gently flowing creation that lends itself to rich harmonies and ingeniously interwoven accompanying lines. In the Missa brevis–for soprano solo, choir, and orchestra–Raminsh shows a competent command of orchestration (again, reminiscent of Rutter’s practiced style) and exhibits yet another facet of his imagination in What Voices in an Unknown Tongue, commissioned for this CD and scored for mezzo-soprano, viola solo, and unaccompanied choir.
Jon Washburn’s Vancouver forces, devoted champions of the work of many Canadian composers including Raminsh, show their usual commitment and enthusiasm for these pieces, and the recording amply and clearly displays the vocal and instrumental details while keeping everything in proper listening perspective. One of the highlights of the program is Alleluia, Amen, a seven-minute a cappella work that makes a credible 21st-century update to Randall Thompson’s multifariously and multitudinously performed (and deceivingly difficult) Alleluia. This one, written for the 1996 Choral Music Experience Institute at Canterbury Christ Church College, includes an obbligato part for unison children’s voices. It’s a challenging but engaging work that deserves wider hearing. The same can be said for the entire disc, which should make a welcome addition to anyone’s modern choral CD library.
