Works for Men's Voice : Svanholm Singers

Veljo TORMIS:
Works for Men’s Voices

An Aboriginal Song
Double Dedication
Crosswind
Our Shadows
Forging the Sampo*
The Bishop and the Pagan
Incantation for a Stormy Sea
Men’s Songs
Curse upon Iron*

*first recordings of these versions

Svanholm Singers
Sofia Soderberg Eberhard, conductor

Digital Recordings: 2006

The Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (born in 1930) has carved a unique position for himself in contemporary music. By marrying the quasi-minimalist rhythmic vigour of Estonian runic singing - a tradition some 3,000 years old - with the extended techniques of modern choral writing, he has created a body of music tingling with excitement, energy and power. Many of the works on this CD - where the composer, playing shaman drum and anvil, joins one of Scandinavia’s brightest young choirs - draw on folk sources in a reaffirmation of Estonian identity; others evoke the forces of nature as a metaphor for political upheaval. ( Toccata Classics )