The Netherlands Radio Choir in the foreign media
Reviews
James MacMillan: Nunc Dimittis/Terteryan: Symphony - choir master: Gijs Leenaars
Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic/Netherlands Radio Choir under Brad Lubman
Bachtrack.com
18 april 2011 - Renée Reitsma
"MacMillan’s Nunc dimittis is a beautiful and powerful work for chorus and orchestra. It contains the obvious traces of Gregorian chant but as with many MacMillan pieces, it is much more grand and excitingly rhythmical. The Groot Omroepkoor, arguably the best choir in The Netherlands, sung at their best, with the final “Amen” ringing out as a truly glorious moment. ........... Somewhat more difficult to digest was Avet Terterian’s Symphony No.6. It was written in 1981 and scored for chamber orchestra, chamber choir and nine phonograms. Starting off sounding like an Arvo Pärt piece,it soon morphed into something much more complex and multi-layered. The sound samples sometimes seemed unnecessary, the choir that was on stage could have sung the Gregorian chanting that was on tape just as effectively. Indeed, once the choir was finally allowed to sing themselves they almost seemed relieved. But once they did start singing the added value of the sound samples became more obvious, the mixture of different textures in sound created an almost trance-like feeling, which was certainly helped by the sober instrumentation. Although not as beautiful as the MacMillan and Raskatov pieces, one cannot help but feel affected by this Symphony No.6, it has a certain mysticism about it that lingers."
Grammophone
juli 2010 Edward Greenfield
"It is remarkable that a Dutch choir can offer such strong and polished performances of these two choral works by James MacMillan, readily surmounting any problems over singing the English text of the a cappella writing in Sun-Dogs. Visitatio Sepulchri on the other hand has a Latin text with powerful instrumental accompaniment. ... Altogether a fine coupling of two superb works, a credit to performers and to the BIS recording engineers, who offer sound both clear and atmospheric."
BBC Music september 2010
David Nice - 5 stars
"The more recent, shorter and purely a cappella work on this disc, Sun-Dogs, struck me as a masterpiece on first hearing. A tour de force of choral writing, in which MacMillan is always assured and in the layered execution of which the Dutch professional choir excels, it sets texts by Michael Symmons Roberts - MacMillan's long-term collaborator who is also a first-rate poet - with memorable results."