Igor Stravinsky - Late Works (Daniel Reuss)

Information

Composer: Igor Stravinsky

• Chorale
• In Memoriam Dylan Thomas
• Otche Nash
• Threni
• Double Canon
• Anthem
• Elegy for J.F.K.
• Epitaphium
• Introitus
• Requiem Canticles
• Two Sacred Songs (Hugo Wolf)

Cappella Amsterdam

Noord Nederlands Orkest

Daniel Reuss, conductor

Date: 2026

Label: PentaTone

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Review

Older recordings attest to the difficulties. Devotional rather than balletic, these late works demand the kind of focused singing and playing that barely existed during Stravinsky’s last productive phase. The best of today’s specialist vocal ensembles, whether active in period practice or devoted to the new, can more or less guarantee delivery of the required pitches though vibrato-lite accuracy may come at the cost of a certain expressive immediacy. Threni, not only Stravinsky’s first completely dodecaphonic work but also the first to incorporate pitchless rhythmic chanting, has excited both scepticism and admiration from listeners of different stripes. If, like me, you tend to respond to music-making imbued with the very qualities Stravinsky’s creative journey was (ostensibly) designed to subvert, you may prefer a fleshier, risk-taking rendition such as Vladimir Jurowski’s live from 2018 on the LPO’s in-house label. Dodgy female soloists notwithstanding, neither the sonorous impact of the men nor the visceral thrust of the argument is easily forgotten.

The present collection has a more direct competitor in Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent anthology made in 2014 (PHI). As now on Pentatone, Stravinsky’s anthem The dove descending breaks the air is included as a makeweight alongside the two major scores. The only other music offered by Herreweghe is the composer’s completion of Gesualdo’s ‘Da pacem Domine’ from Tres Sacrae cantiones. Daniel Reuss’s programme is more generous and more diverse, tracing a longer line of ‘in memoriam’ compositions through terse tributes to deceased luminaries. It ends with 1968’s arrangements of Two Sacred Songs from Hugo Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch. According to Robert Craft, while Stravinsky had more to say about death he could no longer compose anything of his own.

We begin with the closing Chorale from the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, non-vocal music initially conceived as an independent piano piece in memory of Claude Debussy. It is rendered here on harmonium, wheezily easing us into a defiant short-windedness that would fascinate the composer to the very end, or at least until the fifth number of the Requiem Canticles which constitute his last significant artistic statement. Here too is Stravinsky’s a cappella setting of the ‘Our Father’ in the 1926 version with Russian text; there’s less nostalgia than prescient self-pruning in this account. Reuss himself offers no explanations beyond a gnomic paragraph that would doubtless have pleased the composer: ‘I was asked to write a text to accompany this recording, but I believe my contribution is already fully contained in the performance itself. There is a story about a composer who, after playing one of his own piano pieces, was asked if he might explain the work. He simply sat back down at the piano and played it again. That was the explanation. That thought perfectly reflects my own view: the essence of music lies in the sound itself. My commentary, therefore, is the performance itself. If you’d like an explanation from me, just press “play” once more.’

You may or may not consider that helpful. The conventional annotations are provided along with full texts and translations. These beautifully prepared readings, bereft of ugly tone or ragged ensemble, are presented in lucid sound a little drier than might have been expected. Recommended.

— David Gutman

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Igor Stravinsky (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a Russian composer. Son of an operatic bass, he studied privately with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from 1902 to 1908. Soon after the impresario Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes: Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of which, with its shifting and audacious rhythms, was a landmark in music history. Later Stravinsky also adopted Neoclassicism and serialism in his composition. His major Neoclassical works include Oedipus rex (1927) and the Symphony of Psalms (1930).

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Daniel Reuss (born 2 July 1961) is a Dutch German conductor. Born in Leiden, he studied with Barend Schuurman at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands. In 1990, he became director of Cappella Amsterdam, which he turned into a full-time professional ensemble that is now one of the most sought after in the Netherlands. From 2003 to 2006 he was chief conductor of the RIAS Kammerchor in Berlin, with whom he recorded a number of successful CDs. From 2008 to 2013 he was artistic director/chief conductor of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. From 2015 Reuss is chief conductor of Ensemble Vocal Lausanne.

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