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An Attractive Simplicity

Choral music by
Margaret Rizza -
heard by
PATRIC STANDFORD

'... appealing choral textures ...'

Margaret Rizza: Mysterium Amoris. Gaudete Ensemble / Eamonn Dougan. © 2012 Naxos Rights International Ltd

Well known as the professional singer Margaret Lensky, and later a principal vocal studies teacher at the Guildhall School of Music in London for a decade, a new career opened in 1996 when, working under her married name, Margaret Rizza was persuaded to compose a prayer for an international choral gathering. This almost chance event gave rise to a flow of ambitious creative ideas. 'Now that I travel more deeply into the Third Age I find that the creative source, which for me is birthed in and through the contemplative Christian tradition, is undiminished'.

The CD presents choral pieces, both unaccompanied and with instrumental support, covering twelve years from 1998, and although the earlier music seems less assured, there is much in the fifteen titles that explores an attractive simplicity, like the 2004 setting of a text by the Benedictine monk John Main: 'In the silence; in the stillness of the spirit, we move in the ocean of God'...

Copyright © 9 October 2013 Patric Standford,
Suffolk UK

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MARGARET RIZZA: MYSTERIUM AMORIS

MARGARET RIZZA

HILDEGARD VON BINGEN

NAXOS

LONDON

UNITED KINGDOM

CHORAL MUSIC

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