ProStudioMasters.com

Grammy Award nominee - Best Choral Performance, 2016 "... this profoundly beautiful choral piece lay forgotten for over 90 years. Performed here with breathtaking sensitivity by an outstanding New York-based choir, it emerges as a work of equal stature to Rachmaninov’s justly acclaimed Vespers. A wonderful discovery." - BBC Music Magazine "... a compelling account ... the purity of tone is exceptional, helped by near ideal balance and intonation. The acoustic, too, of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, New York, is well chosen and ideal for the scale of the choir and the music ... this opens out into a warm and inviting soundscape as soon as the choir enters." - Fanfare "... the success of this recording has to be attributed to this excellent chorus, 30-plus voices who collectively project a serious love for this music with a vibrant, shimmering tone, perfectly judged dynamics and consistently fine balance and intonation. We can appreciate the care that went into this production, not only in bringing this beautiful unknown work to the world’s attention, but also in the excellent engineering and notes, which happily include full texts and translations. Strongly recommended." - ClassicsToday.com This Grammy-nominated recording from Steven Fox and the Clarion Choir spotlights Passion Week, a long-lost choral masterpiece composed by Rimsky-Korsakov’s favourite student, heir apparent and son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg. A product of his interest in the sacred and mystical, it is a tour de force of the systematic use of medieval chant melodies and shares with Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil the colourful use of choral textures. Steinberg’s settings are complex and rich, with a diverse and sometimes daring harmonic palette, offering movements of distinctive and expressive content that reveal an artist’s search for identity at a time of increasing hostility to religion.