Mäntyjärvi - Choral Music - Helsingin Sanomat

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Even heathens surely cannot help but enjoy to the bottom of their soul the a cappella choral music of Jaakko Mäntyjärvi on sacred texts.

The carefully customised tonal colours are delicious, so much so as to be sinfully titillating. The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge gives a spot-on performance. The sopranos are celestially bright and pure, and the basses can descend to any depths on demand. Stuttgarter Psalmen has an Old-Testament austerity to it; the unison opening of the first movement, ‘Warum toben die Heiden’ (Why do the heathens rage), is thrilling. The Trinity Service is in a more restrained idiom, as befits its function.

★★★★★

Jukka Isopuro