French Choral Music, Vol. 3

Chronique

In this CD, Nederlands Kamerkoor highlights a cappella choral works by French composers Maurice Ohana (1914-1992) and his star student, Edith Canat de Chizy (born in 1950). The composers shared an aesthetic vision, and their music sounds very much alike; both rejected serialism and devoted themselves to creating music that was intensely expressive but thoroughly modern sounding. Their music is volatile, explosive, and unpredictable, and usually seems to be completely unmoored rhythmically. It's harmonically very dense and almost entirely atonal, and uses microtones, non-traditional modes, and a full range of extended vocal techniques. Both composers show remarkably fertile inventiveness and the music often confounds expectations by skidding off in unexpected directions. It's a wild and sometimes bumpy ride, but for anyone attuned to this kind of musical adventure, it can be exhilarating. Ohana's Le tombeau de Louize Labé, one of his last compositions, stands out from the rest of the CD in its relative simplicity; while it's far from tonal, it's structurally transparent and even somewhat traditionally contrapuntal. Nederlands Kamerkoor, led by Roland Hayrabedian, gives a performance of staggering virtuosity. All 16 members of the group must have perfect pitch, to judge from the ease with which they can emerge from the most impenetrable clusters into moments of gleaming consonance. Besides singing with absolute purity and polish, their performance is impassioned and expressive. Globe's sound is clean and clear, with a great sense of presence.
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