The Sacred Spirit of Russia

Winner 2015 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance! As a prelude to this review a disclosure needs to be made: my company, Musica Russica, and I were intimately involved in every detail of this production, from selecting the repertoire, to consulting with Conspirare's Music Director, Craig Hella Johnson, to on-site coaching of the choir, to sitting in the recording booth listening for minute details of diction, to writing the program notes. None of this, however, changes the fact that this is an outstanding recording of fine repertoire by an extraordinary choral group. The artistic conception is to present "The Sacred Spirit of Russia" through the medium of a festive, Russian cathedral-style Divine Liturgy, assembling musical settings by a variety of composers, in much the same way this is done in most Russian Orthodox churches on a given Sunday or feast day. For this recording, some of the changeable propers were selected for the feast of the Nativity of Christ, although the feast-day rubrics weren't followed in every detail. While much of the program was selected from well-known settings by Chesnokov, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Gretchaninoff, and Rachmaninoff, also featured were lesser-known works by Kastalsky, Sviridov, Martynov, and Ilyashenko; several pieces were world-premiere recordings, even though they were written a century or more ago. The overall results manifest the richness, color, and subtlety of nuance and musical gesture that have given Russian sacred choral repertoire its well-deserved reputation as one of the most sublime forms of human vocal expression ever developed in history. The high professional artistry of Conspirare fully measures up to the task of interpreting and bringing to life the sacred words and their musical embodiment. The lavish packaging presentation by harmonia mundi offers a booklet with introductory notes and translations in English, French, and German, in addition to the original Church Slavonic text in Cyrillic. No collection of great choral music in general or Russian Orthodox sacred music in particular will be complete without this CD.--Vladimir Morosan