Tuesday 22 January 2013

Release Roxanna Panufnik's Love Abide

 Love Abide recording session Photo Camilla Jessel Panufnik
Love Abide recording session
Photo Camilla Jessel Panufnik
Yesterday, (22 January), I attended to launch of Roxanna Panufnik's new CD on Warner Classics, Love Abide. The CD contains music which explores the commonality of faith between different religions. Roxanna Panufnik explained that her interest in World Music developed into a desire to build musical bridges, in the belief that we all share a same God. Panufnik herself has both Jewish and Roman Catholic heritage, and on the disc her sources of text range from the Bible to Sufi, Zen and Sephardic Jewish.

Her Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis,  though written for use in the Anglican church, incorporates the plainchant Ave Maria.  The Schola Missa de Angelis, which was commissioned by the London Oratory School Schola, is based on the plainchant Missa de Angelis and Panufnik said that she thought it was the first plainchant based mass to be produced since Durufle wrote his.

The video artist Mischa Giankovich has made animations for Love is the Master (a setting of the Sufi poet Rumi, I heard the London premiere of the work last year), and for the Zen Love Song. You can see Giankovich's animations at the Love Abide website. For the Love is the Master, Giankovich uses images of the Sufi holy book.

At the launch we were treated to both animations and then Voces 8 sang the discs opening track, Love Endureth, live; this uses early Christian and Jewish sephardic chants.



The disc was recorded by Voces 8, the London Oratory School Schola and Colla Voce Singers under conductor Lee Ward, the London Mozart Players, the Exultate Singers under conductor David Ogden.

 There is a dedicated Love Abide website which includes resources for choirs with sample scores.

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