Grieg & Gade Sacred Choral Works

Niels Gade belongs to the generation of composers before Grieg, and his religious output is much more convincing than that of his sometime protégé, displaying hardly any of that saccharine piety common in early 19th-century choral works. Indeed, as a body (and because Gade often writes for eight parts), it stands comparison with Schumann's glorious Doppelchörige Gesänge. Grieg's relationship with the church, however, was much more strained, and this explains the relatively small number of religious choral works in his output, and also the tone of professional beauty rather than devotion that they display. Having said that, though, they do span the composer's entire career and show his artistic development in miniature, from the academic fugue he wrote as a student to the highly individualized use of folk tunes in his final composition, Four Hymns. The beauty and accuracy of the Danish National Radio Choir's singing are almost frightening, until the silken persuasiveness of the sound seduces you into forgetting it. --Warwick Thompson Amazon.com