Arvo Pärt: Da Pacem
Paul Hillier directing the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, organ


Count this among your blessings this Thanksgiving: Paul Hillier is still roaming the Earth. Better yet, he's recording. Let joy be unconfined!

If you haven't heard of Hillier, he's built up his career from his days with the choir at St. Paul's Cathedral in London to his current role as conductor/director/writer/baritone -- You knew I would work the baritone angle in there somewhere, didn't you? -- spending much of the recent past directing critically acclaimed choral ensembles, including the Hilliard Ensemble, Theater of Voices, and His Majestie's Clerkes. His credits, too numerous to list here, comprise compositions stretching across a millennium of glorious music. (Photo Credit: Benjamin Ealovega)

Two of my special favorites are Mr. Hillier's recordings of British and early American songs of prayer and praise: William Billings: A Land of Pure Delight and Goostly Psalmes: Anglo-American Psalmody 1550-1800, which are now available through Harmonia Mundi's splendid budget series and identified simply as Early American Choral Music, Vol. I and Vol. II. Both were made with His Majestie's Clerkes, featured on NPR, and beloved of a number of our Bethesda Olsson's customers and staff back in the day.

You'll notice that the above listings belong to a particular spiritual heritage. Though I don't wish to create the impression that Hillier eschews secular material, much of his finest work springs from the music of the Christian faith, notably that of the Orthodox tradition.

In that area, Hillier has often turned to the great Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. This new recording, Da Pacem, showcases short spiritually themed works, prayers of supplication, worship, and trust. Texts are drawn from sources ranging from the Psalms to the Magnificat to one of John Henry Newman's sermons, "Littlemore Tractus":

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in his mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

The album includes Part's "Two Slavic Psalms," settings of Psalm 117 and Psalm 131. The first is a song of praise; the second, a meditation on trust in God. The straightforward joy of the one gives over to the serenity and simplicity of the other.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, whose repertoire possesses amazing breadth, work a particular magic with Part's minimalist approach. There is purity yet subtle texture in the presentation, giving the listener something to reach for and respond to.

In a later blog, I'll happily discuss Hillier's latest offering for the Christmas season, A New Joy, a disc of Estonian, Russian, and Ukrainian music of the season -- another offering from the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and truly something to make your heart soar.

Wishing you peace and a very happy Thanksgiving.

Paul McCartney: Ecce Cor Meum.
Orchestration by John Fraser.
Gavin Greenaway conducting the Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields.
Kate Royal, soprano.
King's College Choir Boys, Cambridge.
Magdalen College Choir Boys, Oxford.
London Voices.

It's often in musical experiences over the years that we build the foundation of our memories, that repository of the familiar and comfortable, as well as the unsettling and inescapable. I can reach back to a performance of The Play of Daniel in New York as my first real exposure to early music, at age 11, and to an afternoon a few months later at the Met, where I saw my first opera (La Traviata, with Maralin Niska).

But I'd have to go further back than that to locate the day when I first heard Paul McCartney, and like the opera and the early music, he's never really left. In fact, when I started mulling over this entry, a particular McCartney tune from the '70s settled into my brain and is there at this writing, thank you very much. I'll skip the title and spare you the earworm.

But decades after The Ed Sullivan Show and even "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," McCartney's on a very different journey, as evidenced by his new classical work, Ecce Cor Meum, "Behold My Heart," a phrase which McCartney saw written at the base of a crucifix.

"Now wait a minute," you're thinking. "Isn't that the sort of talk that got John into trouble all those years ago, and all those albums burned?"

Simmer down there, even in these politically volatile times. What McCartney has composed is four-part secular oratorio. It's not without a spiritual component, but it is, first and foremost, a personal testament, self-revelation. The work was begun before the death of McCartney's first wife, Linda, and bears, the composer says, her spirit.

The story of the work's composition is rather endearing in other ways, from McCartney's reaching back to his schoolboy Latin to his discovery during an initial performance of the work that the lengthy sung passages were, in fact, wearing out the young treble soloist.

So is Ecce Cor Meum recognizably Paul McCartney? Well, aside from the presence of some Latin, yes. If you are expecting the simple-hearted Paul, he's still lurking in there somewhere, within lyrics about the transforming power of music, of love, of nature, of peace. With McCartney, it always goes back to love, to the heart.

But perhaps it's a damaged heart. Look to the Interlude (Lament), with its oboe solo and atmospheric voices, and its more reflective mood. Lovely, yes, but informed by grief.

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, "For grief indeed is love and grief beside."

Joshua Bell. Voice of the Violin.

This November is a month of beauty, as the autumn leaves retain their brilliance well beyond the passing of October and into the edge of winter. The brevity of the days seems an aesthetic oversight; we should be given more chances to revel in fall's glowing colors.

With these brief days and longer nights, November remains a time of reflection, a month when we honor our veterans, commemorate our dead, perhaps even recall that we do so because on the 11th hour of the 11th day of this 11th month in 1918, a war that cost the lives of a generation of men drew to a close. The survivors of that war have dwindled to a few, and yet we dare not forget the price that they -- and indeed the world -- paid in that terrible time.

In several faith traditions, the month is marked by the feasts of All Saints (November 1st) and All Souls (November 2nd), the latter being also known as Dia de los Muertos, a day to acknowledge those who have passed from this life.

With the latter feast in mind, I could think of no better way to spend November 2nd than to hear the Schola Cantorum at St. Matthew's Cathedral perform Faure's Requiem. Three years back, in another bittersweet November, I had heard this same fine ensemble perform "Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing" by Howells, and then "In Paradisum" from Faure, both in special commemoration of President Kennedy.

This past Thursday, the strains of Faure soared through the cathedral again, this time in memory of the family and friends of the parish community.

"May you be taken to paradise by angels..."

The organist Paul Hardy and members of the University of Maryland Orchestra provided accompaniment, conducted by William Culverhouse, and the soloists were the soprano Ellen Kliman and the bass Thomas Stork. In my mind, Mr. Stork will ever be linked to the musical themes of death and resurrection. Quite apart from his solo in the Requiem, I will not soon forget his joyous, heartfelt performance earlier this year of Handel's "The Trumpet Shall Sound" during the Easter season -- a work markedly different in energy from the Requiem, but very much an answer to the pleas raised in Faure's text.

In no less reflective of vein is this season's offering from the great violinist Joshua Bell. Voice of the Violin is deliberately named, for it is comprised of transcriptions in which, with a single exception, Bell's violin takes up the part of the human voice.

And the effect is entrancing. Familiar vocal works gain new, yet more haunting beauty under Bell's touch. Imagine, if you will, "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka with a violin soloist, rather than the soprano voice, or "Un furtiva lagrima" from L'Elisir d'Amore in the same fashion. In the latter work, the playing is as expressive as any tenor, perhaps more so.

But there's one more surprise. In the final track, he is joined by soprano Anna Netrebko on Richard Strauss's "Morgen!" It is a beautiful marriage of musicianship, an affirmation of what came before.

Right about now you're wondering if it isn't a stretch to link young Mr. Bell to this decidedly autumnal mood I've taken up in this column. In fact the exquisite melancholy and delicate beauty of his playing speak eloquently to us in this bittersweet season. Fall may leave us contemplating bare trees and an uncertain future, but also the precious nature of life.

Surely I'm not the only viewer who has approached on-screen literary adaptations with trepidation, to the point where I can only imagine the writer's anguish at what is done to the original work: characters are eliminated or reconceived, pivotal scenes vanish, perhaps even the mind-set or philosophy is irretrievably altered, as when, for example, Joanne Harris's edgy, disturbing Chocolat was transformed for the screen as a life-affirming Johnny Depp vehicle.

And yet the literary adaptation deservedly occupies a permanent place in television and film. It is no accident that I switched eagerly from the Super Bowl to the latest Dickensian adaptation on Masterpiece Theatre, a heart-stoppingly suspenseful Bleak House. "Shake me up, Judy!"

Among the most ubiquitous screen and television adaptations of recent years have been the novels of Jane Austen, from an array of 1995 releases (including Clueless, a thoroughly entertaining updating of Emma) to the more recent Mansfield Park. The trend shows no signs of abating, thanks to the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, nominated for several Academy Awards.

Austen adaptations vary in quality and approach. Two of the greatest happen to be among my all-time favorite films, and both are available on fine DVD transfers: Roger Michell's Persuasion and Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, both from 1995.

So austere as to approach Dogma 95 style, Michell's Persuasion is, if anything, even more immensely enjoyable on DVD. Watching the film again recently, I was bowled over by its earthiness. You'll almost feel as though you're walking along the seaside with the stalwarts of the Royal Navy, joining an impromptu dance at a country manor, or nibbling marzipan in a fashionable Bath confectionary.

And what a cast! Even the secondary roles are filled by the cream of British and Irish acting talent, including Simon Russell Beale, Victoria Hamilton, and Fiona Shaw.

With Sense and Sensibility, the supremely gifted Ang Lee proved yet again why he is one of the most exciting directors working today. Granted, he had a lot of help from Emma Thompson's witty, utterly romantic screenplay, which deservedly picked up an Academy Award. Here character is established with an economy of dialogue, and heartbreak and hope alternate through the beautifully conceived and edited finale.

As with Persuasion, the cast is irreproachable, from screenwriter/star Thompson to a 20-year-old Kate Winslet to an array of familiar British actors, including Robert Hardy, Hugh Laurie, Alan Rickman, Elizabeth Spriggs, and Imelda Staunton.

The DVD edition of Sense and Sensibility contains many tempting extras, including Emma Thompson's hilarious "Jane Austen Goes to the Golden Globes" speech.

If your taste doesn't extend to Jane Austen, don't despair. Olsson's carries excellent DVD adaptations of your favorite novels, including Acorn Media's fine miniseries version of John Mortimer's Summer's Lease, as well as recent BBC versions of Our Mutual Friend and Martin Chuzzlewit, both from the novels of Charles Dickens.