Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir - Supraskie Kantyki (2022) Hi-Res

This new release from DUX presents a world premiere recording of the Suprasl Canticles; a recently reconstructed score from the collections that are being kept in Vilnius, but come from the famous monastery in Suprasl.

In the last two decades, three vocal scores have been uncovered, and another three have been reconstructed on the basis of other manuscripts containing music written in the Orthodox polyphony technique, called partesny singing. The authorship of the Suprasl Canticles is attributed to Greek Catholic monks from the Basilian order who lived in the monastery in the 17th century. The score contains 49 religious vocal pieces for male voices (two trebles, two tenors and two basses) to texts in Old Church Slavonic.

The monastery in Suprasl was once an important cultural centre aware of the achievements of Western music. In the Canticles, we see the impact of that music in the form of extremely elaborate Baroque polyphony.

The Suprasl Canticles were the crowning achievement of the Western European musical stylisation in the Orthodox Church tradition in the Commonwealth of Poland. This kind of singing was possible thanks to contacts of the Orthodox and Uniate Church hierarchs (especially Uniate Metropolitan Bishops Kolenda and Zochowski) who became acquainted with the culture of the Latin West and the countries of southern Europe.

Thanks to the authors of the Suprasl Canticles, Baroque polyphony was implemented in the Moscow Patriarchate and at the Tsar's court. The Suprasl Canticles were of great importance in the cultural transmission of Western Renaissance and Baroque music to the tradition of the Uniate Orthodox Church in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 17th century as well as to the litur-gical repertoire of Orthodox Russia. The Suprasl Canticles are performed here by the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir under the baton of Violetta Bielecka, assisted by Joanna Jurczuk.

Poldasie Opera
Philharmonic Choir
Violetta Bielecka, conductor