James Wood: New London Chamber Choir - Xenakis: Choral Music

In the oeuvre of many composers the vocal works are often the most personal, as if the primacy of the human voice and speech elicit an unguarded response. Xenakis' earliest works were based on a Bart�kian approach to Greek folk music, which he rejected. However, his Greek origins continued to disturb him like subterranean tremors. His great love of ancient theatre, Greek philosophy and his mother tongue had to be married to a new musical language. The works on this CD all stem therefore from highly autobiographical sources.The works fall into three groups: the first intrumentalizes and orchestrates the voice stripped of text as in Nuits and Knephas; the second (Medea) is based on his beloved Classical Greek theatre with a dramatic context and text; and the third is a relatively new group, setting vocal texts where the language is left whole and undisturbed in a music which displays a limpid and strict modality (A Colone and Serment).