What a wonderful start to this series, Simon! Something about the slowly shifting chromatic harmonies reminds me of Nono’s Prometeo, one of the few operas that I will happily sit down and just listen to. That score makes heavy use of electronic effects, of course, which leads me to the question of whether Kirschner’s voices are synthetic. Well, they certainly aren’t standard MIDI “voices”, that’s for sure, as they seem to preserve intact the essential vulnerability that individual choral voices possess, regardless of how accomplished they sound in ensemble. Perhaps Kirschner has extensively sampled real singers?
Seconded – this is shaping up to being another great Lent series. And thanks for reminding me about Nono’s Prometeo – I know very little of Nono’s music but I’ve heard very good things about that particular opera – I’ll definitely try and make time to give it a listen.
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What a wonderful start to this series, Simon! Something about the slowly shifting chromatic harmonies reminds me of Nono’s Prometeo, one of the few operas that I will happily sit down and just listen to. That score makes heavy use of electronic effects, of course, which leads me to the question of whether Kirschner’s voices are synthetic. Well, they certainly aren’t standard MIDI “voices”, that’s for sure, as they seem to preserve intact the essential vulnerability that individual choral voices possess, regardless of how accomplished they sound in ensemble. Perhaps Kirschner has extensively sampled real singers?
Seconded – this is shaping up to being another great Lent series. And thanks for reminding me about Nono’s Prometeo – I know very little of Nono’s music but I’ve heard very good things about that particular opera – I’ll definitely try and make time to give it a listen.
No worries, Dan. As luck would have it, a new recording has recently appeared…
https://open.spotify.com/album/6j7eMDPt73D8feHBgO4Znf