JAAN-EIK TULVE: STELLA MATUTINA
Vox Clamantis: Weekend Guitar Trio
MIRARE MIR064 80'

Recorded in the Church of the Transfiguration in Tallinn, Stella Matutina is a Marian devotion that joins the ancient and traditional, in singing as well as words, with modern styles of interpretation in a combination that is intense and so moving as at times to be at only just short of disturbing. Tulve has studied Gregorian chant profoundly, in particular at Solesmes, and in this work he blends traditional liturgical music, performed by the Vox Clamantis vocal ensemble, with an excitingly varied range of sounds from the curiously titled Weekend Guitar Trio. Employing the whole gamut of modern techniques, and not forgetting some older ones, the instrumentalists add their commentary to a sequence of psalms, Ave Maris Stella and the Loreto Litany. Sometimes silent, often discreetly hushed, they also burst out, creating what, to use Haydn's term, might perhaps be called the music of the spheres. This work is yet further testimony to the inventiveness of modern religious composers from the Baltic. CNS