Ola Gjeilo: Dreamweaver (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

The Road (text: Charles Anthony Silvestri); Autumn (text: Silvestri); The North; Dreamweaver; Winter Light; Agnus Dei; Stone Rose; Ingen Vinner Frem Til Den Evige Ro (trad. Norwegian hymn arr. Gjeilo). Ola Gjeilo, piano; Grace Davidson, soprano; Duncan Riddell, solo violin; Roberto Sorrentino, solo cello; The Choir of Royal Holloway; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Rupert Gough, conductor. Decca 485 4635

The last time I reviewed an album by the Norwegian composer and pianist Ola Gjeilo (b. 1978, pronounced “yay-lo”), the solo piano album Dawn, I mentioned how impressed I had been by a couple of his earlier choral albums but then concluded my review as follows: “This new one, however, is a disappointment, comprising as it does music that never seems to rise above the merely pleasant. For a composer with Gjeilo’s talents, merely pleasant is not nearly enough. As they say in the sports world, “c’mon man!” Perhaps it is time to for Gjeilo to get back to choral writing.” (You can see the complete review here.) Well, it looks as though that time has come, given that Dreamweaver, this new release from Decca, although not entirely choral, features a generous helping of Gjeilo’s masterly choral writing. 

 

There are two multi-movement choral works by Gjeilo (who, by the way, now resides in New York) on the album, which opens with his six-movement piece titled The Road. The text, which Gjeilo says is his “tribute to one of Norway’s most stunning stretches of road,” is by Charles Anthony Silvestri, who wrote the lyrics for Eric Whitacre’s beautifully moving composition The Sacred Veil, which revolves around the death of Silvestri’s wife, Julia, from cancer.  We have reviewed two remarkable recordings of that piece, one featuring The Los Angeles Master Chorale (which you can find here), the other featuring the English ensemble Voces8 (which you can find here). Gjeilo plays piano on all but one of the six  movements, Riddell weaving his solo violin lines into the opening and closing movements, with the choir and orchestra providing the bulk of the music on all but the opening track. The other major choral work is the title piece, Dreamweaver, also with text by Silvestri, a seven-movement-piece based on a Norwegian folk poem about a man who has a dream about the afterlife and then awakens to tell others what he has seen. As in The Road, there are contribution from piano and violin as well as chorus and orchestra.

The remaining pieces are varied in format and are all relatively brief. Autumn (2:51) is a choral version of a piano track from a previous Gjeilo release, an EP titled Seasons. The composer asked Silvestri to write a text that would capture the feeling of the season, and the poet responded with the text which is sung here by The Choir of The Royal Holloway under the direction of Rupert Gough. The next piece, The Road (2:49), features Gjeilo alone at the keyboard. It is pleasant, gentle, a nice palette cleanser before the title piece that follows.

 

Following Dreamweaver are four more brief tracks. First up is Winter Light (2:50), which features Roberto Sorrentino on cello playing a simple melody, accompanied by Gjeilo on piano. Much richer in both sound and feeling is the reverent Agnus Dei (3:36) for choir alone. Then comes Stone Rose (3:40) another pleasant but fairly straightforward tune, augmented here by wordless choir. The program closes with Ingen Vinner Frem Til Den Evige Ro (“Nobody Wins Until Eternal Rest”) (2:53), an arrangement by Gjeilo of a traditional Norwegian folk song. As Gjeilo explain, “this is an arrangement of one of my favorite folk songs, which later became part of the Norwegian hymnal. The melody is from Hallingdal, a far-reaching valley including the town of Geilo, where my family is from.” As you might expect from a folk song that was adapted for a hymn, the melody is easy to follow and sung to great effect by the choir.

 

Although not as powerful overall as his purely choral albums (the Chandos album Northern Lights is breathtakingly good), Dreamweaver is still a welcome effort from a composer capable of creating music of great beauty. In terms of production, the sound quality is rich and full bodied. Texts are included, but it would have been nice to have more information about the music and especially the musicians. Let’s hope that Gjeilo continues to find the creative inspiration that will lead him to compose more fine choral music in the future. But for right now, Dreamweaver is well worth a listen.