"Fresh takes on evergreen holiday music"
Group's Performance Full of Simple Beauty
By Michael Anthony
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Rose Ensemble's "Fire of the Soul" isn't really a Christmas CD. Yet the group's scholarly but expressive performances of relatively unknown music by Mikolaj Zielenski, a Polish composer of the early 17th century, and Vasily Titov, who wrote in Moscow later in that century, will reward listening during the holidays. These works take us from the idiom of chant to what in Titov resembles the larger harmonic structures of Monteverdi. Rose artistic director Jordan Sramek adds brief pieces by Andrzej Rohaczewski and a contemporary Russian now living in the Twin Cities, Sergey Khvoshchinsky.
Sramek's group of 12, of which he is one of the tenors, sings with a pure tone and assured pitch. This is accomplished work, and the recorded ambience is given just the kind of rich resonance the music needs.