Alexander Kastalsky - Memory Eternal (The Clarion Choir)

Information

Composer: Alexander Kastalsky

• (01) Memory Eternal to the Fallen Heroes
• (12) Doors of Thy Mercy
• (13) From my youth
• (14) Blessed are they

The Clarion Choir

Steven Fox, conductor

Date: 2018

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573889

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Review

Kastalsky’s importance in Russian music of the beginning of the 20th century was very considerable. Not only was he a fine composer in his own right but he advised and influenced many of his near contemporaries, including Chesnokov, Grechaninov and Rachmaninov. His liturgical style may be heard very clearly in the three pieces that follow the main work on this disc, Miloserdiya dveri (‘Doors of thy mercy’, a work I have always thought underrated and which here receives a performance that truly brings it to life), Ot yunosti moyeya (‘From my youth’) and the resonant Blazenni, yazhe izbral (‘Blessed are they’).

Memory eternal is not itself a strictly liturgical work, though all its texts are liturgical in origin. Following the end of the First World War, Kastalsky felt the need to write a large-scale commemorative work. It exists in a confusing number of versions, the most ambitious of which uses texts in several languages and musical references from a number of religious (not only Christian) traditions, but was not performed until many years later. Another version mixes Orthodox and Roman Catholic funeral texts and includes organ; that recorded here employs texts from the Orthodox memorial service exclusively (though not following the liturgical order exactly) and is a cappella.

It is a deeply impressive work in many ways, beginning with an elaborate setting of the Great Litany, complete here with the priestly petitions, resonantly intoned by Protodeacon Leonid Roschko (the Triple Litany, the work’s 10th movement, is also done this way). In the following movements, Kastalsky gives free rein both to his considerable melodic gifts and to his talent for ‘choral orchestration’, perhaps combining them most impressively in the second movement, ‘Alliluya i Glubinoyu mudrosti’. One of the highlights of the work is the fifth movement, ‘Molitvu proliyu’, a brief but heartfelt personal plea for salvation, though the closing ‘Vechnaya pamiat’, a setting of ‘memory eternal’ dedicated to the ‘warriors killed in battle for their fatherland’, is also deeply moving.

The Clarion Choir, under the sure direction of Steven Fox, turn in a thrilling performance, recorded with clarity and not too much resonance in St Jean Baptiste Church in New York. This recording (together with its publication by Musica Russica) represents the rehabilitation of a major work, which nobody interested in Russian music of the 20th century should miss.

-- Ivan Moody, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Sep/Kastalsky_memory_8573889.htm

https://www.allmusic.com/album/alexander-kastalsky-memory-eternal-mw0003192243

https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.573889&languageid=EN

https://www.amazon.com/Kastalsky-Memory-Eternal-Clarion-Choir/dp/B07F21FK5Z

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Alexander Kastalsky (28 November [O.S. 16 November] 1856 – 17 December 1926) was a Russian composer and folklorist. He was born in Moscow and studied music theory, composition and the piano at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1910-1918, Kastalsky was director of the Moscow Synodal School and the Moscow Synodal Choir, until the school was dissolved and merged with the choral faculty of the Conservatory. As a composer, by 1917 he had written over 130 works and established himself as an important composer of the neo-Russian style. After the 1917 Revolution, he devoted himself to the study of folksongs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Kastalsky

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Founded in 2006, The Clarion Choir has performed on some of the great stages of North America and Europe. The group specialises in Early Music and Slavonic repertoire, often performing with the period-instrument Clarion Orchestra and artistic director Steven Fox. The group is based and performs regularly in New York, in such venues as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. The Clarion Choir have performed with such renowned artists as Harry Bicket and The English Concert, Eric Jacobsen and The Knights, Susan Graham, Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and Madonna.

https://clarionsociety.org/

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