Trio Mediaeval: Soir, Dit-Elle
The Trio Mediaeval's first CD,Words of the Angel, was an ear-opener, a CD of mostly old music interspersed with some modern works, all ravishingly sung, and, oddly, very harmonious over its span of centuries. This CD features most of a mass by the 15th-century Englishman Leonel Power, with works by the Ukrainian Oleh Harkavyy (b. 1968) and the British Ivan Moody (b. 1964), Gavin Bryars (b.1943), and Andrew Smith (b. 1970); there is more new music than old. The Harkavyy Kyrie sounds "older" than all of the Power, which is oddly dense and surprising in its harmonies. A Bryars "Ave Regina" and "Laude Novella" (this last for solo voice) wafts in and out of oldness and modernity in novel but not uncomfortable ways, and Andrew Smith offers an "Ave Maria" and "Regina Caeli" which are distinctly modern but simply beautiful--and wonderfully pious. The two works by Ivan Moody, while not as staggeringly beautiful and daring as his contributions to the Trio's premiere CD, are almost as beautiful, growing in loveliness with each hearing. A Gregorian Chant ends this CD of devotional music. The whole is dizzyingly beautiful and endlessly interesting; the sonics are as gloriously clear and clean as the Trio's pitch, taste, and inherent sound. Don't do without this CD.--Robert Levine