Jason Victor Serinus

Nominated for a 2017 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Compendium," ECM's Gesualdo pairs arrangements of the haunting music of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613) with Gesualdo-inspired works by living composers Brett Dean (b. 1961) and Erkki-Sven Tüür (b. 1959). If at least one of those contemporary works, performed by Tõnu Kaljuste's justly famed Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, is not exactly what you'd expect, the "compendium" as a whole is unfailingly beautiful and engaging.

First off, those expectations. After reading Alex Ross's critique of Gesualdo's music, as contained in his 2011 piece for The New Yorker, it's hard to get it out of my head:

"If Gesualdo had not committed such shocking acts, we might not pay such close attention to his music. But if he had not written such shocking music we would not care so much about his deeds. Many bloodier crimes have been forgotten; it's the nexus of high art and foul play that catches our fancy."

Truth be told, Gesualdo's oft-shocking music, with its unpredictable, preternaturally modern harmonic shifts and turns, can stand on its own terms, without biographical references. Like Van Gogh's increasingly exaggerated and hallucinogenic images, it swirls through one's consciousness with a disturbing, oft-disturbed language uniquely its own. But given the two men's varying degrees of instability and madness, art and personality are inevitably, perhaps inextricably entwined.

Neither the music of Dean nor Tüür, at least on this album, hints at acts as brutal as Prince Gesualdo's murder of his first wife and her lover, let alone his sadism and masochism. Nonetheless, auditioned via 24/96 files [that are downloadable from HDTracks and other sites, Dean's 20+ minute Carlo (1997) for choir and string orchestra mostly closely conveys the world we might expect.

Carlo begins with a reference to Gesualdo's madrigal Moro lasso (1611), which we hear, in Kaluste's string orchestra transcription, as the opening track on the recording. Once the theme has been stated by Dean, it grows even darker and eerier than its inspiration. With the sounds of the Estonian choir sometimes resembling the voices of the dead, and with deep basses whispering as in Berio's sensational Sinfonia, the piece seems to reflect the strange interior life of the man who inspired it. Ending ominously, its mystery is profound. I'd expect this piece to have a long shelf life, with multiple performances by choirs around the globe.

After Tüür's gorgeous string orchestra version of Gesualdo's O crux benedicta (1603), the recording ends with two works by Tüur that, to various degrees, defy expectations. The first, L'ombra della croce (2014), which is dedicated to ECM producer Manfred Eicher, creates a mysterious world neither ancient nor modern. Inhabiting the ethers in between, the sound of L'ombra della croce's massed strings bring to mind the sound of strings on some performances of Barber's Adagio. Haunting, perhaps, but far from soul-shaking. The work may be gorgeous in its own right, but it is light years away from the phantasmagoric world that Tüür created in his unforgettable Symphony No.6 "Strata" (2007).

Most puzzling, however, is Tüür's Psalmody for string orchestra (1993/2011). While it may build upon medieval European harmonies, it comes across as an extremely catchy, danceable piece of minimalism that sounds more than a bit like early Steve Reich. Even though the choir's increasingly loud Hallelujah's are as exciting as all get-out, Psalmody ultimately seems to leave Gesualdo behind and dissipate the energy of all the music that came before it as it creates a very different and far less disturbing sound world.

Any number of composers have begun their compositions with themes from earlier centuries, only to make of them something new. But as the final and longest work on the recording, Psalmody fails to break new ground, and ultimately leaves us smiling at Gesualdo's madness rather than feeling concerned about its ramifications.