KuK-Art.com

***** Amazing - The best of YouTube video!

A listener on YouTube

***** Beautiful

This is stunningly beautiful, particularly track 14. I liked it so much I plan to purchase a couple more for gifts.

Susan B. at Amazon.com

***** Highly recommended

The Tendai monks and the Schola Gregoriana Pragensis ensemble have created a wonderful recording resulting from their mutual collaboration at concerts and liturgy in Prague in 2000 and on tour of Japan in 2005. These meditative encounters focus on interesting contrasts in the two musical languages and expressions, at the same time seeking common elements present in both traditions. Parallels can be found in the recitation of the sacred text or in the interpretation principle of alternating a soloist with a choir, which overlaps the boundaries of confession repertoires. Another striking feature is the tonality based on the pentatonic scale appearing both in shomyo singing and Gregorian chant. This unique collaboration has produced music of mesmerising beauty and intensity. Highly recommended.

New Classics UK

Qobuz Hi-Res Audio

Awarded by Qobuz with the "Hi-Res Audio" March 2012.

Qobuz

***** Raises your spirits and nourishes your soul

Beautiful music. Raises my spirits and nourishes my soul.

Linda Hayes on Amazon.com

I was very moved by these performances

Since chanting-monk CDs are all the rage nowadays, K&K Verlagsanstalt decided to issue this disc of a special concert given at the Maulbronn Monastery in 2008. This concert, sponsored by UNESCO, combined the music of Tendai Buddhist monks from Japan with the Schola Gregoriana Pragensis choir, founded in 1987 in what is now the Czech Republic. The aim was to have the religious chants and hymns of both religions complement each other and create a multi-religious ambience redoubled in effect by the atmosphere of the surroundings.
The experiment works very well indeed. Initially, the two choirs alternate their chants, the Westerners more formal in structure, the Easterners more fluid in theirs. It was interesting for me to hear Japanese monks as compared to Tibetans who are much more familiar here in the U.S. The Japanese monks all chant in a higher pitch, more in the tenor range, although some of their members are capable, as are Tibetans, of "chording" with the voice from time to time. As for Schola Gregoriana Pragensis, they are quite simply a beautiful-sounding group with great feeling in their singing.
As the concert progresses, both choirs begin combining their religious chants to fascinating effect. Despite the musical and cultural differences, everything blends surprisingly well.
This is an excellent recording in every respect and in its own way more universal than many such "chant" CDs out there. In the spirit of the music presented, I feel a little odd recommending the disc, but as you can probably tell I was very moved by these performances.

Lynn René Bayley, Fanfare Magazine

This is an absolutely beautiful performance

This is an absolutely beautiful performance. It is crisp it is authentic. The recording captures the ambiance of the Monastery. Vox Nostra is tops in my list. If your looking for Gregorian chant crab this before it ascends to heaven.

'Maggie' on Amazon.com

It is not possible to overstate the importance of this recording

The first word that comes to mind on listening to this CD is haunting. As a procession entering into the abbey church (St. Bernhard, Eusserthal, Rhineland-Palatinate) we initially hear a distant group of singers approaching, as they get louder and fill the space with their resplendent voices we settle into a transcendental journey across ancient medieval Europe. Each of the five singers on this recording is a scholar specialist (musicology, paleography, theology) in this repertoire. They include, Amy Green (USA), Susanne Wilsdorf, Ellen Hünigen, Werner Blau, Burkard Werner (Germany). They gave a concert in the abbey church on September 8, 2013. This CD is a snapshot recorded on site in direct 2-track stereo digital. The sound quality is quite simply amazing. A restored church from what was left of the original ruined abbey Kloster Eusserthal, is widely known in Europe as a great concert acoustic. An ongoing series of performances is presented annually in the former Cistercian monument, near Annweiler am Trifels.
Vox Nostra to quote their notes, "…favors a slow, flowing style of performance in an appropriately restrained tempo. The vocal sound which results is rich in overtones, and fills the entire space; it allows the archaic and pure intervals of this music to be fully appreciated, and ensures that the complex weaving of the voices is clearly audible." This writer would have to qualify their approach and the amazing results as revolutionary and without president or rival. I feel like I have heard medieval chant for the very first time it is so startling and overpowering.
The repertoire is varied and all taken from original manuscripts in Spain, Italy, Scotland, Germany, England and France. The recording ends as it began. The singers exit the abbey church and their voices trail off into the distance into silence. It is not possible to overstate the importance of this new recording on a label that is almost totally unknown here in North America. Insist on listening for yourself Vox Nostra's artistic triumph Veri Solis Radius.

© 2015 Timothy Eaton Memorial Church

An inspired performance, perfectly coordinated

OUVERTURE - Das Klassik-Blog, December 2017

A spirited rediscovery of true expression that's centuries old

This album is part of a series recorded live at the medieval-era Maulbronn Monastery in southern Germany, but it explores the music of a very different region: the Hamburger Ratsmusik, doubtless a strange name to Anglophone ears, is the Music of the Hamburg City Council, a concert series with a tradition a half a millennium long. It petered out and was then revived.
This concert, conceptualized by gambist and ensemble leader Simone Eckert, collects a group of pieces from the 18th century, all connected by the single theme of time (die Zeit)... The combination of pieces is largely unlike anything that's been put on disc before, and many of them are unknown. The program combines simple, strophic settings like Johann Schop's "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort" (O Eternity, You Thunder-Word), from the mid-17th century, with Telemann's simple moralistic cantatas, more involved Bachian pieces, and instrumental works of several kinds.
Soprano Dorothee Mields does an exceptional job of communicating the sober but appealing mood of the music, so different from the operatic ideals that informed even much of the output of Bach, and the backing musicians keep everything lively even as the emotion level is low-key; the two Telemann trio sonatas included are nicely differentiated by accompaniment, with one featuring a theorbo continuo.
The whole program breathes and feels like a spirited rediscovery of true expression that's centuries old, and the sound from the monastery is well suited to this music. Recommended, partly in hopes that the album will stimulate further exploration of the repertory from Hamburg, an immensely influential city in its day.

James Manheim, All Music Guide USA

HI-RES AUDIO

Awarded by Qobuz with the HI-RES AUDIO

March 2012