January 28, 2019

  • Exploring Ancient Texts: Choral Music of Jan Jiresek

     

    Jan Jirasek: Choral Music
    Bonifantes Boys Choir, Czech Soloist Consort/Jan Misek
    Navona Records 6205
    Total Time:  45:25
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Czech composer Jan Jirasek (1955) has written for film (Wild Flowers) receiving Czech Lion Awards for his work.  His works have been performed internationally.  He is also a noted choral composer whose work has been associated with the Bonifantes Boys Choir where he has served as the home composer.  Two of the works on this album have been performed by the choir.

    The first of them is the Missa Propria which was featured on the Bonifantes’ Boys Choir North American tour in 2014.  It is a setting of the mass (Kyrie, Gloria-with central Miserere, Credo, and Agnus Dei) that blends ancient chant modes with a more contemporary harmonic palette that weaves the various lines through delicate dissonances into often gorgeous harmonies or unisonal arrival points.  There is a somewhat darker quality that lends itself to a modern medieval musical exploration most apparent in the opening “Kyrie”.  The central “Gloria” has some more interesting developments like a rather chilling slide on the word deo and more disjunct lines that alternate with a more traditional chant-like quality.  This will transfer more into the final “Agnus Dei.”  The piece creates this sort of modern sensibility that is like a final plea, not quite wailing, but still emotionally rich.

    From more traditional Christian liturgical texts, the second work, Missa Paralleli, explores a variety of sacred sources.  The goal here is to discover parallels in the threads of religious writing from the Buddha, the Koran, Judaism, and the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church.  The music here continues this exploration of ancient modes and sounds, though adds some contemporary harmonic dissonance touches and spoken words that serve a more percussive role.  The music is equally gorgeous throughout here in a work that has a bit more interesting musical and textual settings.

    Finally, Jirasek turns to a variety of nationalist Czech texts and images in Tam, Kde Slava Neprestava.  Here too, these stunning texts are stripped of a more Romantic feel to pre-Renaissance qualities.  The three songs also feature bass trombones, sopranino flutes and percussion.  Some of the ideas heard in the previous pieces further coalesce in these selections.  It would be good to have the texts and translations of these selections though.

    Any one of these pieces would be enough to entice one to explore Jirasek’s choral music and it is great to have them all in this package in performances featuring the ensemble he has worked so closely with here.  In a culture entranced by Game of Thrones, Jirasek’s pieces, especially the last work, are certainly going to be attractive.  They tend to fall within those modern pieces that find inspiration in modal writing with just slight polyphonic moments adding additional vigor and harmonic interest.