Fantastic CD review from Norman Lebrecht on La Scena!

Accentus

Richard Strauss: German Motet

(Naïve)

***** (5 stars)

Totally out of a blue sleeve, sung by the Latvian radio choir with the French conductor Laurence Equilbey, comes a luminous collection of Strauss vocal works, unfamiliar to my ears and unrelated to anything he was writing at the time. The German motet, premiered December 1913 in Berlin and scored in 20 parts - 16 choirs and four soloists - is second in complexity only to Tallis's Spem in Aulium.

There are passing soprano affinities to the recent Rosenkavalier but nothing by way of baroque affectation or patriotic bombast, just an unleashing of choral virtuosity for the sheer delight of it. Strauss makes much play on the word Licht (light) in a text taken from Friedrich Rückert, whose poems yielded Gustav Mahler's two great cycles. He is less concerned than Mahler with consonantal clarity, preferring a wash of sound through which the solo voices rise and fall like dolphins in an evening sea. Gorgeous.

Strauss returns to Rückert in 1935 when, sidelined by the Nazis, he writes Dream Light for male choruses in a manner morosely reminiscent of Schubert and Brahms, reaching back for roots he once shared with the now-banned Mahler. Two other songs on this revelatory disc date from 1897 when both composers were poised at the edge of their prime. As for the record sleeve, Naïve make the most beautiful covers to be found anywhere in these straitened times. 

Click here to watch a YouTube video about this recording: