St Olaf's Choir and Chamber Ensemble - Ives - Choir & Organ

The excellent, richly-toned St Olaf Choir from Northfield Minnesota are ideal performers for Charles Ives's oratorio, The Celesital Country. Written around 1900, the work marks the end of a decade that saw the composer as church musician. The chorus and soli sections, separated by instrumantal interludes, reveal a more conventional Ives than the pioneering spirit that was to come. Silence Accompanied is a compilation of the composer's songs, most of them written in the 1920s. Breathtakinigly beautiful, they show the composer in many moods. The performances are first-rate throughout and how refreshing it is to have a choir with such excellent diction.