"Breathtaking, strikingly beautiful...I've never heard music so rich, thrilling, purging and alive...A Rose in Winter is stunning"

A salute to the Dale Warland Singers' often breathtaking compact disc, A Rose in Winter

Not strictly a Christmas CD, yet full of seasonal settings of the Nativity, A Rose in Winter ably underscores the parallels between Renaissance choral techniques and the highbrow a cappella vocal music of our own day. That sounds dry, but don't believe it. This disc has landmark breadth and resonance, not to mention ample fire. You're not likely to hear a better, more adventuresome or compelling choral collection anytime soon. At its best, A Rose in Winter is stunning.

Listening to the laser playback at high volume can be a dizzying experience. Warland has gathered together some fairly incredible pieces by contemporary composers-works that are sensuous, enveloping, serene, stately, organic, and deep. The CD has its share of ancient music, flawlessly realized-such as Hans Leo Hassler's antiphonal war-horse, "Verbum caro factum est," and an "Ave Maria" from the 16th century. These pieces retain amazing vitality. They are soundly built and immaculately sung.

But what will set the listener's head spinning are Warland's discoveries from the last two decades. There are passages of John Paynter's "The Rose" (1969), for instance, that feel as natural as breathing, and that undulate like Pacific Ocean waves seen from the air. Other segments are as busy and microtonal as an aviary. The track is both earthy and ethereal-altogether remarkable.

David Carney's "The Angel Gabriel" (1970) strikingly revives the ancient art of troubadouring. It's a costume drama of the mind, staged in two minutes, powered along by guest Jeffrey Van's simple, intensely rhythmic guitar breaks. Andrzej Koszewski's "Jesu Parvule" (1975) is one of the spookier evocations of the Christ child's virgin birth that you'll ever hear, punctuated by eerie whistling and humming. In edited form, it wouldn't seem out of place on a macabre film soundtrack. "Jesu Parvule" is strikingly beautiful, but a bit disorienting-even jarring-considering the sacred subject matter. Perhaps mysticism is at work here. Thins mystical certainly obsessed the English poet William Blake, and A Rose in Winter includes a stark, lyrical, effective setting of Blake's "The Lamb" (1982), penned by U.K. composer John Taverner. (Taverner was the only classical artist ever signed to the Beatles' Apple Records).

But what's arguably the most amazing selection of all, and the inspiration for the entire A Rose in Winter project, is Scandinavian composer Sven-David Sandstrom's rendering ofthe "Agnus Dei" (1981), from the Ordinary of the Mass. I've never heard music so rich, thrilling, purging, and alive at any church service.

By now, the Dale Warland Singers have made a pack of conventional Christmas carol LPs-all well-done and worthwhile,. But none of those discs stretches choral boundaries, or challenges the imagination, quite like A Rose in Winter.

---Twin Cities Reader

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