Igor Stravinsky: Late Works

This recording must contain some of the finest ever interpretations of these works: the choral singing, especially, is exceptional in its clarity and super-precise tuning. Daniel Reuss’s conducting brilliantly connects with the music’s essence, its ultra-Russian, bell-like vividness, as in the grander passages of Threni.

The orchestral playing, too, is top-flight: the ‘Exaudi’ movement of Requiem Canticles here comes across as perhaps the most purely beautiful music that even Stravinsky ever wrote. And among a superlative sextet of soloists, tenor Guy Cutting excels in the central setting of In Memoriam Dylan Thomas – ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ – along with the four solo string players.

The arrangements of Hugo Wolf’s Two Sacred Songs were the last, death-haunted music Stravinsky completed; the lovely singing and artistry of mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland here makes the experience of hearing them achingly moving.

Kudos to Reuss for bringing this spellbinding music to life. Noord Nederlands Orkest and Cappella Amsterdam breathe color and light into work from the composer’s most austere period.

In his later years, Igor Stravinsky became fascinated by serialism, both as a means of distilling musical thought and as an intellectual and stylistic challenge for a composer entering his 70s and 80s. The results struck some contemporary listeners as austere, but there’s a self-effacing purity and beauty about this complex, intellectually probing music that deserves a wider audience than hitherto. Kudos, then, to conductor Daniel Reuss, whose precise yet vital interpretations teem with color and light.

There are four main works here. In Memoriam Dylan Thomas from 1954 is an extended, impassioned setting for solo tenor of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Threni, a spiny, multifaceted jewel from 1958, sets words from the Book of Lamentations. The haunting Introitus and bristling Requiem Canticles, from 1965 and 1966 respectively, complete the set, interspersed with briefer pieces including an unpretentious Lord’s Prayer and the severely cerebral two-minute Elegy for JFK.

The playing of the Noord Nederlands Orkest is fearlessly crisp and clean, but it’s the characterful vocals of Cappella Amsterdam that really draw the ear, bringing this spellbinding music to life. State-of-the-art sonics make this new recording a prime contender in a less than overcrowded field.