Wojciech Kilar [*], Angelus (complete!) 

Wojciech Kilar • Wojciech Kilar -- [*], Angelus.
* WOJCIECH KILAR was born in the then Polish city of Lwów on 17th July, 1932 † 29th.December 2013 in Katowice. He studied piano and composition at the Katowice Academy from 1950 to 1955, then at the State Higher Music School in Kraków until 1958. In 1957 he attended the Darmstadt Summer School, and during 1959-60 was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1960 his Oda Béla Bartók in memoriam received the Lili Boulanger Foundation Award, the first of numerous prizes to come.
A prolific film composer, notably for such major Polish directors as Krysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, in the 1990s Kilar has found success in the West for his scores to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, for which he won an ASCAP award in 1993, Roman Polánski's Death and the Maiden, and Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady. After a period of experimentation in the 1960s, his concert work became notable for its directness of expression and immediacy of impact. Polish traditional sources, sacred and secular, are often prominent, in an idiom which, according to the writer Adrian Thomas, has "... been variously regarded as spuriously kitsch, naively devotional or intuitively post-modern".
ANGELUS (1984) is a large-scale setting of the Ave Maria text. Muttered recitations, alternately for men's and women's voices, gradually increase in emotional and dynamic intensity. As the voices join in unison, a timpani roll leads to an outburst for chorus and orchestra around the words Jesus and Amen. A solo soprano enters in ecstatic strains, complemented by the chorus' devotional restraint. Piano chords underpin a texture of Respighi-like richness, as the soprano continues her rapt meditation, the chorus echoing certain of her phrases as a brief climax, again on the name Jesus, is reached. As the vocal writing becomes more imploring, the music moves towards a fulsome outburst, cut off by a tam-tam stroke which returns soloist and chorus to their initial invocation. Strings and timpani provide the basis for the benedictory final section, in which the work's emotional essence is brought to a noble apotheosis. These measured tones again build to a climax, which stops short, leaving the music to play itself out in a mood of beneficent calm. Over low strings, the opening recitation briefly returns, concluding with a hushed Amen.
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Grafika:
1. Albrecht Dürer, Modlące się dłonie
2. Gustaw Doré, Anioł karmiący Eliasza.
3. Albrecht Dürer, Matka Boska
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Sound 1600 kb/s