Having performed Jenkins' "Requiem" in November 2007, Grimsby Bach Choir is to perform his Stabat Mater in 2010. Have a listen to it now.

Track Listing

1. Cantus lacrimosus
2. Incantation
3. Vidit Jesum in tormentis
4. Lament
5. Sancta Mater
6. Now my life is only weeping.
7. And the Mother did weep
8. Virgo virginum
9. Are you lost out in darkness?
10. Ave verum
11. Fac, ut portem Christi mortem
12. Paradisi gloria

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1337 in Music
• Released on: 2008-03-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds
• Running time: 62 minutes

Album Description
Following the success of "This Land of Ours", a set of arrangements for brass band and male voice choir that took Britain's most popular living composer back to his Welsh roots, Karl Jenkins returns with a new work to complement his massively successful "Requiem" and "Armed Man". The at once emotional, modern, culturally diverse and universally accessible style that has come to characterise the composer's sound is perfectly exemplified in this poignant new choral album.

Stabat Mater is a thirteenth century Roman Catholic sequence attributed to Jacopone da Todi. It has been set to music by many composers, among them Haydn, Dvorak, Vivaldi, Rossini, Pergolesi, Stanford, Gounod, Penderecki, Poulenc, Szymanowski, Alessandro Scarlatti (1724), Domenico Scarlatti (1715), Pedro de Escobar, Arvo Pärt and Giuseppe Verdi. Its title is an abbreviation of the first line, Stabat Mater Dolorosa ("The sorrowful mother was standing"). The hymn, one of the most powerful and immediate of medieval poems, meditates on the suffering of Mary, Jesus Christ's mother, during his crucifixion.

Karl's setting extends this to a universal depiction of grief by using ancient text from the area (Holy Land/Middle East) that will be sung in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic (the lingua franca of the period) and a contemporary poem, sung in English. The orchestration includes instruments indigenous to the area, percussion such as the darbuka & riq and the woodwind duduk.

There are two soloists, both female singers, Jurgita Adamonyte and Belinda Sykes, who doubles on duduk or mey, a middle eastern ancient woodwind instrument.

The world premiere performance of the Stabat Mater will take place in Liverpool on 15th March 2008.

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Customer Reviews

Not perfect but not far off
I'm not sure this album is a masterpiece. In places the music can be repetative and slightly unimaginative. That sounds like a much bigger criticism than it really is though. I gave this album 5 stars becase where the music itself may lack the arrangements and the performances more than make up. Belinda Sykes voice is nothing short of breathtaking. The unlikely mix of arabic and baroque sounds works to provide an endlessly interesting texture through which Belinda Sykes weaves a thread of beauty the like of which I have never heard before.

Superb!
Some of the previous Reviews seem to imply that this is just Karl Jenkins again (Ho Hum). I wonder if they would say the same about Beethoven "Oh I've heard all nine Symphonies and they are all terribly Beethoven". Well yes and that is their glory as are the works of Karl Jenkins. I have sung both the 'Armed Man' and the 'Requiem' and both moved me beyond measure. I imagine that this will do the same when my Choral Society (inevitably) performs it. Like most Of Jenkins Music the first listening gives the result of "very nice but I am not sure what it's all about'. The second listening gets the juices flowing and by the third listening you are totally hooked. The harmonies of the Ave Verum and the use of Arabic for the Incantation are positively ethereal. Yes there are echoes of the Requiem and the Armed man but this piece is all the better for that. Just stick with it folks and you will see what I mean.

A Bitter Disappointment
I attended the Premier at Liverpool Cathedral and was bitterly disappointed. Far from being a single piece that relates the Stabat Mater to comtemporary themes, it feels more like a repetitive and unimaginative setting of the Stabat, interrupted by more emotional pieces on other texts. It is clear that Jenkins's heart is in these other sections, which vary from alarming to heart-breaking but are never dull (hence three stars, not one). The rest is just "Jenkins by numbers": strong, syncopated percussion backed by heavy strings and urgent brasses, long crescendo, then timp roll & gong. Repeat without variation for 45 minutes. You've heard this before and may well like it. It does little for me.