Rejoice - Merel Vercammen,maya Fridman,cappella Amsterdam,daniel Reuss - Audio CD (Arrives in 50 days)

In 2023, Merel Vercammen and Maya Fridman were invited by November Music—The Netherlands’ leading festival for contemporary music—to perform another of Vasks’s works, Plainscapes (2002), in the Grote Kerk in Den Bosch. Being able to perform and record it with the superb choir Cappella Amsterdam was a dream come true. Vasks is deeply concerned about the climate. In Plainscapes—a word he coined to refer to the flat Latvian landscape, where the horizon is always distant and the stars shine brightly—the choir imitates birds. The piece is meditative, consisting of three vocalises separated by short interludes, culminating in an evocation of awakening nature. On 12 March 2025, we put the finishing touches on the edits of Rejoice! by Sofia Gubaidulina—a significant piece that we cherish deeply and which feels utterly complete. We had recorded it during the darkest days of January in the medieval Pieterskerk, an oasis of stillness in our home city of Utrecht. The acoustics there are breathtaking. The cold only heightened the sense of urgency. The afternoon after completing the project and listening to the final result in the studio, we received the sad news that Sofia Gubaidulina had passed away. She was 93 years old, but we firmly believe that her artistic legacy will outlive us all. We hope this album can make a modest contribution to that legacy. The work is a celebration of harmonics, full of stratospheric heights, magical and ethereal moments. What links the three composers on this album— Gubaidulina, Vasks, and Shalygin—is their profound kinship with nature. Not only as a source of inspiration, but as a guiding principle: both Gubaidulina and Vasks incorporate written-out improvisations untethered from fixed timing, as though the music breathes in the rhythm of nature itself. Shalygin composed his work at a time when the world seemed to come to a halt, and many hoped this moment of silence might benefit the natural world. For us, nature forms the common thread between these works—a space for contemplation, and a reminder of what truly matters.

Tracklist

1. Plainscapes
2. Plainscapes
3. Plainscapes
4. Angel: Version For Violin and Cello
5. Rejoice! Sonata For Violin and Violoncello
6. Rejoice! Sonata For Violin and Violoncello
7. Rejoice! Sonata For Violin and Violoncello
8. Rejoice! Sonata For Violin and Violoncello
9. Rejoice! Sonata For Violin and Violoncello

Label: All Ears Records | Origin: Holland