RAUTAVAARA : Complete Works for Male Choir (YL Male Voice Choir · Talla Vocal Ensemble · Matti & Pasi Hyökki) 2CD (2008) FLAC (tracks+.cue) lossless

Since Einojuhani Rautavaara is still actively composing, it might seem premature to label a collection his Complete Works for Male Chorus, but there is already enough material to fill out two CDs. Rautavaara is an exceptionally prolific composer, and he has been writing for men's voices since early in career; the pieces collected here span more than 50 years. The composer is a master of graceful choral writing; each piece is put together with skill and imagination. It's unfortunate that the pieces aren't presented in chronological order, since it would have been helpful to hear the composer's growth. As it is, this ordering tends to homogenize the impression of Rautavaara's styles, and while his versatility is evident from piece to piece, and individual works are striking, it's easy for a sense of monotony to set in over the course of the nearly 100 minutes of music. The composer favors dense textures and the unrelenting sound of massed a cappella low voices over such a long time tends to dull the ear and makes it easy to miss the felicities of individual works. The pieces with sections for a solo voice stand out dramatically for the textural contrast they provide. The best way to appreciate these works would be to savor a few at a time. The YL Male Voice Choir, led by Matti Hyökki, and the Talla Vocal Ensemble, led by Pasi Hyökki, sing with excellent intonation and blend, and their tone is rounded and full. Ondine's sound is present and warm; it's hard to know whether or not the engineers could have done anything to alleviate the darkness of such bass-heavy repertoire. Stephen Eddins
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SIBELIUS : Choral Music (2010) Serie The Sibelius Edition – Vol. 11 | 6CD BOX-SET | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Jean Sibelius' emergence as a composer coincided with the rapid development of choral singing in Finland, at a time when new choirs were being established all over the country. The importance of the genre may be measured by the fact that one of Sibelius's most deeply felt pieces for mixed choir, Män från slätten och havet (Men from Land and Sea), received its first performance by a choir of gargantuan proportions - around 1,300 singers - gathered at a festival in the city of Vaasa in 1912. Choral music also forms an important part of Sibelius' production: besides the present collection of more than 7 hours of music for choir a cappella and with piano or organ accompaniment, there are a large number of orchestral works involving choir. (These are included in volume 3, 'Voice and Orchestra', of this edition.) As a consequence of the division in Finland between Finnish- and Swedish-speakers, Sibelius set texts in both languages, and while a large majority of his solo songs use Swedish texts, in the choral music we find a much larger proportion of settings in Finnish - often, if far from always, of texts from Kalevala, the national epic poem, or its lyric counterpart Kanteletar. Like previous volumes in the SIBELIUS EDITION, the present collection includes not only the published works, but also unpublished pieces, revisions and early versions. Many of these are here recorded for the first time, such as the version with piano of the two choral movements of Kullervo and the reconstruction of the Cantata for the University Graduation Ceremonies of 1897. Other rarities, quite unexpected for those whose knowledge of Sibelius is mainly restricted to his symphonic output, are the two brief arrangements of 'Italian Folk Songs', and the collection of Chorales for mixed choir written during the student years in Helsinki and in Berlin. Performing this wealth of music are some of Finland's finest choirs, with the YL Male Voice Choir and Akademiska Sångföreningen sharing the pieces for male choir, with contributions from their Swedish colleagues in Orphei Drängar. The music for mixed choir is championed by the Dominante and the Jubilate choirs, while most of the piano accompaniments are signed Folke Gräsbeck, whose recordings of Sibelius' complete music for solo piano have just been released. BIS   Tracklist & Credits