Byzantine Easter

Another Easter piece but it doesn't feel too incongruous to be spinning it out of season. It is a composition by Sir John Tavener called Lamentations and Praises - a Liturgical Drama and is performed by the American male voice choir Chanticleer and the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston who both also commissioned the work. The piece is scored for male voices, flute, bass trombone, string quintet, tape and percussion consisting of timpani, Byzantine monastery bell, Tibetan temple bowl, tam-tam, tubular bells and simantron ( a wooden sounding board struck with a hammer ). The work is based on a series of icons from Holy Week and the Resurrection and on the service of matins on easter Saturday, called praises in the Greek Orthodox church and lamentations in the Russian. The music is processional, called by Tavener a corridor of music linking the various icons. It is slow but with a building momentum which the conductor John Jennings of Chanticleer keeps a firm control of. The music manages to retain a deep Byzantine feel despite the varied voices of the US choir which aren't characteristically deep basses. Tavener has to be admired for continuing to plough his own solitary furrow and this is one of the most successful of the holy minimalist genre.