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7/25/2025, 7:46:37 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DMWbvd8nIQ&list=OLAK5uy_kmz6QoTQER-iog2Qj5Pt5vVsL7FkKbT7s&index=1
>Although I’m a “choral person”, I’m not a big fan of late 19th-century oratorios: too big, too serious, too drenched in grand and glorious effects (those drippy, dense, overwrought, ear-clogging harmonies!), not to mention that these things were often performed with choruses of hundreds and orchestras to match. You might as well just launch a raft of fireworks and let the good times roll. Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but not far off. But as soon as you would like to just conveniently dismiss such works all in a flip of the hand, you hear something like Dvorák’s Svatá Ludmila (Saint Ludmila) and, darn it, you have to revise everything you thought you believed.
>This oratorio, from 1886, written for the Leeds Festival in England, is a work that will just consume the unsuspecting listener in its sheer loveliness, especially in the multitude of gorgeous choral movements, but also in the numerous arias, all of which are beautifully written and expertly realized in this first-rate recording. As you listen you can’t help at times thinking “Brahms”, mostly in the orchestration, but occasionally in the biggest, most dramatic choral sections. You may not think about it, but there’s a genius composer at work here, one who knows how to organize and develop a dramatic idea and set it loose to unfold seamlessly, telling its story without catch or awkward pause or musical inconsistency.
>Although I’m a “choral person”, I’m not a big fan of late 19th-century oratorios: too big, too serious, too drenched in grand and glorious effects (those drippy, dense, overwrought, ear-clogging harmonies!), not to mention that these things were often performed with choruses of hundreds and orchestras to match. You might as well just launch a raft of fireworks and let the good times roll. Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but not far off. But as soon as you would like to just conveniently dismiss such works all in a flip of the hand, you hear something like Dvorák’s Svatá Ludmila (Saint Ludmila) and, darn it, you have to revise everything you thought you believed.
>This oratorio, from 1886, written for the Leeds Festival in England, is a work that will just consume the unsuspecting listener in its sheer loveliness, especially in the multitude of gorgeous choral movements, but also in the numerous arias, all of which are beautifully written and expertly realized in this first-rate recording. As you listen you can’t help at times thinking “Brahms”, mostly in the orchestration, but occasionally in the biggest, most dramatic choral sections. You may not think about it, but there’s a genius composer at work here, one who knows how to organize and develop a dramatic idea and set it loose to unfold seamlessly, telling its story without catch or awkward pause or musical inconsistency.
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