Kreek's Notebook : Gough / Britten Sinfonia, Royal Holloway Choir

Rupert Gough and the Choir of Royal Holloway offer listeners another fascinating album of contemporary Baltic music. The primary work on the recording is based on Estonian folk hymns collected in the early twentieth century by Cyrillus Kreek, who was the Estonian equivalent of Bartok or Grainger. During the Soviet era, the singing of these religious songs was forbidden and the entire genre was all but forgotten. By the end of the twentieth century, fresh light could be shone on these folk collections and composer Tonu Korvits was particularly struck by the music's fresh possibilities. In writing Kreek's Notebook, Korvits both pays homage to Kreek and presents his own totally modern take on the folk hymn idiom. Although there is a dramatic unity to this eight-movement work, there is much diversity in timbre and scoring. The effect is improvisatory in the creative ornamentation of the vocal lines, and suffused with dreamy textures that bring to mind the great tradition of Eastern European choral writing.