Description on Youtube:
Chamber Choir Aquarius (32 Flemish singers), directed by Marc Michael De Smet
Opening piece 1:58 (the very beginning is an introduction in the Dutch language)
Performed 19 September 2013 in the Lambertuskerk, Maastricht, The Netherlands as part of the Festival Musica Sacra
Broadcasted January 5, 2014 by Radio 4, The Netherlands
The website of the choir http://www.gc-aquarius.be/
Their performance of the Kanon Pokajanen recorded in 2008 is available on cd http://www.gc-aquarius.be/index.php?o...
They performed the Kanon Pokajanen
March 8, 2014 8.00 p.m. in the Carolus Borromeuskerk, Hendrik Conscienceplein 12, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium.
April 20, 2014 8.00 p.m. in the Toonzaal, Prins Bernhardstraat 4-6 , 's Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.
May 21, 2014 8.00 p.m. in the Sint-Maartenskerk, Sint-Maartenskerkstraat, 8500 Kortrijk, Belgium.
August 15, 2015 in the Sint Martinus kerk, Bever (Vlaams-Brabant), Belgium
October 24, 2015 in GC het Marca (the late Sint-Eligiuskerk), Maarkeweg 65A, 9680 Maarkedal, Belgium
Fr. Ivan Moody wrote about the Kanon Pokajanen in The Sounding (Posted by the Orthodox Christian Network. 5 January 2015):
The Kanon Pokajanen, or Canon of Repentance, arose from a commission for a work to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the foundation of Cologne Cathedral. Completed in 1997, it was first performed in the following year by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste. The Slavonic text of the Kanon is taken from the prayerbook of the Russian Orthodox Church.
What is characteristic of the work as a whole, however, is the composer’s total absorption in the penitential words he is setting. Indeed, one might consider the Kanon the ne plus ultra of a precise attention to text that characterizes his entire output; and it is worth recalling that Pärt has set a number of languages, including English, Estonian, German, Italian, Russian, Slavonic and Spanish. In parallel with, and apparent contradiction to, this attention to detail is the astounding harmonic richness that arises from what is essentially a single, static modality, based on D. Indeed, the Kanon may be considered on one level an anthology of the composer’s choral techniques as he has developed them over the years since his discovery of the “tintinnabuli” style in the late 1970s, and a demonstration of the extraordinary richness which has arisen from that apparently simple technique. The work’s extraordinary variety of colour derives essentially from the subtle shadings, and also abrupt changes, of choral texture mentioned above, from dense chordal work covering the entire range of the choir to unadorned passages for one or two voices reminiscent of Russian Znamenny chant.
