Tavener: No Longer Mourn For Me
Steven Isserlis
(Hyperion)

CONTEMPORARY classical composers aiming for spiritual depth and new dimensions in their music have long been seen as in the artistic vanguard, never more so than if they find a unique voice.

John Tavener, with his exploration of the Anglican faith  in the 1960s, then his conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, is one who found that unique voice.

Renowned cello player Steven Isserlis, a devotee of Tavener and a personal friend through much of his career, is noted for the lyricism, tenderness, power and beauty in his playing and he helped shape and realise the composer’s sound, most notably on his seminal work The Protecting Veil, nominated for the 1992 Mercury Prize.

The album No Longer Mourn for Me, devoted to Tavener compositions, took six years to record and on it Isserlis is joined by The Philharmonia Orchestra, Trinity Boys Choir, bass baritone Matthew Rose and Sufi singer Abi Sampa.

The eight cellists, all under the craftsmanship of conductor Omer Meir Wellber, are superb and  Isserlis’s playing is at its very height, the spirit driving the divine work.

Album opener is the graceful choral work Preces and Responses, arranged by Isserlis for cello. It is rooted in Tavener’s early association with the Anglican church, one that he became distanced from, and was first performed some six months after his death in 2013 in Wells cathedral.

At times triumphal, it's a peculiarly English pastoral, occasionally verging on the sentimental. Yet it grows in restraint, reflected in its sombre solo colours, and is a deeply felt yet contradictory work.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is derived from a short story by Leo Tolstoy about a High Court judge’s suffering and death from a terminal illness.

Superbly recorded, it is a 27-minute epic which features Matthew Rose performing often extraordinary vocal gymnastics. Sometimes comical, and at times rhythmically off centre, it's guided along by two trombones, percussion and strings.

The jagged, angular running strings of the Philharmonia bring to mind a Bernard Herman score, with all the elements conjuring tense atmospheres underlined with distant choral overtones. High cello lines, at times taking the melodic lead, and a shimmering piano eventually fade into an unknown distance.

The album’s stand-out track is the 15-minute mantra Mahamatar. Derived from a Byzantine chant, it was originally written to accompany a film about pilgrims directed by Werner Herzog.

A slow, brooding cello sets the scene for a powerhouse improvisation by Sufi singer Abi Sampa, backed by tubular bells, tense strings and Isserlis taking the lead on cello. An overwhelming, emotionally accessible triumph.

Popule Meus is a meditation on the Good Friday series of antiphons and responses known as the Reproaches and is based on the Judaic and Christian text “O my people, what have I done to you.”

It opens around bursting primitive but melodic timpani and slow cello and includes passages requiring what the composer instructed to be a “graceful” Indian feeling.

The album closes with Isserlis's master stroke, an eight-cello arrangement of No Longer Mourn For Me, taken from Tavener’s choral work Three Shakespeare Sonnets.

Premiered just a few days after Tavener’s death, it is a sublime work of tenderness and beauty and it concludes what will surely become a classic album by Isserlis and his gifted team, an essential part of this extraordinary canon of spiritual work.