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Stories   >   PaTRAM Institute Male Choir - More Honourable than the Cherubim is a magnificent album and certainly in my thoughts for 'Recording of the Year' / MusicWeb International

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PaTRAM Institute Male Choir - More Honourable than the Cherubim is a magnificent album and certainly in my thoughts for 'Recording of the Year' / MusicWeb International

Posted: August 26, 2021

MusicWeb's John Quinn writes...... It's just over three years ago that I had the ear-opening experience of reviewing a disc by Vladimir Gorbik and the PaTRAM Institute Male Choir. That was a recording of liturgical music by Pavel Chesnokov, entitled Teach Me Thy Statutes (review). Since then, two other PaTRAM recordings have come my way, though these featured a mixed voice choir and were not conducted by Gorbik. Those two discs maintained very high artistic standards, even if they didn't quite match the impact of that exceptional Chesnokov recording (review ~ review).

Now, in what I think is their first Chandos release, Gorbik and the PaTRAM Institute Male Choir return with a mixed programme of liturgical pieces by a roster of composers. They have gone back to Saratov but to a different recording location – the Chesnokov recording was made in the Church of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, Saratov Orthodox Theological Seminary. Once again, the technical side of the project was in the hands of Blanton Alspaugh and the engineering wizards from Soundmirror Inc. In one respect, however, this latest recording is on a much bigger scale than the Chesnokov project. For Teach Me Thy Statutes Gorbik had a choir comprising 21 tenors, 9 baritones, 7 basses and five Octavists. This time the choir has been expanded to 55 singers, drawn from five different countries. There are now 25 tenors, 11 baritones (plus the soloist, Mikhail Davydov, who also appeared on the Chesnokov disc), 10 basses and no fewer than nine Octavists. Having Octavists in such luxuriant numbers gives a fabulously deep foundation to the choral sound. In fact, as I listened to these pieces, though I was seriously impressed by the full sound of the choir, time and again it was the high tenor lines – fearlessly and accurately negotiated – and the cavernous sound of the Octavists that especially caught my ear.

This is a magnificent album and it will certainly feature strongly in my thoughts when we're asked to nominate our Recordings of the Year for 2021.

READ THE FULL MusicWeb REVIEW