Reviewed by John Irvine

Ivan Moody (b1963) is an up and coming composer who is beginning to make a name for himself within the field of choral music. In particular, like Arvo Part and John Tavener, he is keen to reflect his faith as a member of the Orthodox Church in his music, and tries to reflect the beauty, timelessness and spirituality of traditional orthodox music in his own works. "Passion And Resurrection" was composed in 1993 for the Tampere International Choir Festival. Unlike in the Western churches, there has never been a tradition of dramatic presentation of the Passion of Christ, the period of the week preceding the crucifixion, in the Orthodox Church. In their services the passion and resurrection are linked: "We worship thy passion of Christ: show us also thy glorious resurrection." As Moody himself puts it, "The Passion is at once the most difficult and yet the most important subject with which as artist may engage...one of the central problems is whether it should be seen in largely dramatic terms, or whether its ritual aspect should be brought to the fore." In terms of this work, the approach is that of a static, ritualistic piece. The Gospel text is sung as it would be in a church service with simple intoning, except that another voice is introduced to sing the words of Christ. The remaining text of hymns is sung by a choir, supported by strings (certainly not part of Orthodox radition!) and bells. Such a minimalist approach is open to criticism: it can be argued that the structure of the piece is to fragile to support the subject matter, the music too sparse in terms of both melody and harmony to sustain the interest of the listener. And yet the work is strangely impelling, drawing the listener into a still place where holy mysteries are revealed, as it were. Readers acquainted with the works of part and Tavener will be on familiar ground here, and will draw obvious points of comparison between Moody's older precursors and his own work. If anything, however, Moody's approach is to immerse himself even deeper into Orthodox musical techniques than John Tavener leaving us with the question, is this really a new work of music or simply a reworking of traditional music? For this reviewer, listening to 'Passion And Resurrection' over and over simply confirmed my impression that however we approach this piece, it works as an act of meditation, worship, prayer, whatever you want to call it. and it sufficiently escapes the ghetto of orthodoxy to appeal to wider audiences. Performances by Red Byrd ensemble (soloists and strings) and the Capella Amsterdam choir) are quite beautiful and the quality of the recording is superb, balancing to perfection both the individual voices and the ambient acoustic of the recording location strangely for Hyperion Records this is not identified on the sleeve notes). A recording to treasure.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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