CD ECM Records Trio Mediaeval: Stella Maris

2005

Anna Maria Friman - voce
Linn Andrea Fuglseth - vocel
Torunn Ostrem Ossum - voce

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BBC Music Magazine - Choral & Song Choice

The word „mellifluous“ might almost have been coined to describe the distinctively pure, cool sound of Trio Mediaeval’s three female voices. It has an alluring quality all its own, which makes everything they sing – from the earliest polyphony to newly composed pieces which, to some extent, inhabit the same sound-world – wonderfully rewarding to listen to. The mediaeval contribution here consists of a sequence of 12th- and 13th-century settings, often in delightfully lilting triple time, which neatly demonstrate the contrast between the celebrated sweetness of the predominantly chordal English style and the more dissonant and contrapuntal Parisian manner of such pieces as Perotin’s “Dum sigillum”. These are complemented by Sungji Hong’s “Missa Lumen de lumine”, a virtuoso exploration of the technical and sonorous possibilities of three high voices.
Elizabeth Roche, Daily Telegraph

The Korean composer Sungji Hong wrote her Missa Lumen de Lumine especially for the Trio in 2002, and it fits them perfectly. It’s a parody in the original, strict, non-pejorative sense: elements of medieval style are deftly woven together with modern grammar and gestures to produce a work of iridescent freshness.
Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine

To hear the haunting voices of Trio Mediaeval is to be transported to a quiet place, where everything modern drops away and you are left with a stillness punctuated only by the sweetly ethereal rhythms of words written down in places long forgotten. … Their vocal talent is so moving that it is hard to imagine that the words they are calling forth were written during a time when women weren’t even allowed to sing in church.
Charles Devilbiss, Washington Examiner