Kind Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Kind Blu-ray Movie Review

Ravishing choral music from Norway and Scandinavia.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 20, 2011

Even those of us with a deep love of choral music probably wouldn’t instantly think of the Scandinavian countries if asked to provide a good example of a robust tradition and broad repertoire. And you know what? We’d be wrong. 2L’s new audio only Blu-ray, Kind, is one of the most amazingly evocative releases of choral music in many a Nordic moon. 2L has been a leader in hi-def audio for some time, releasing a handful of impeccably recorded and often quite adventurous albums which have sought to promote the music of Norway and other countries in that neck of the world. You may in fact never have heard of any of the composers or arrangers featured on Kind, and be similarly ignorant of the Nidaros String Quartet, which plays on one of the choral tracks of this BD. You may be somewhat aware of Ensemble 96, the elegant choral assemblage which received a Grammy nomination a few years ago. And yet this is some of the most gorgeous music you’re likely to hear this or any year. If you’re a fan of releases by the Hilliard Ensemble, or, in a somewhat more popular mode, the incredible Celtic group Anuna, you will mostly likely be in sonic heaven with Kind, an interesting assemblage of pieces which bears the subtitle “about children, for adults.”

All of these selections play on the etymology of “kind,” bringing in the typical meaning of “nice,” but also relating it to such words as “kinder,” and specifically gearing the texts to be either for or about children. Many of these songs are traditional lullabies, given new and often startling arrangements by Frank Havrøy. The traditional songs especially seem to waft slowly over the air in ever shifting array, slowly dissolving in and out of dissonances, but with an overall tonal basis that always keeps them firmly rooted in a diatonic setting, albeit highly chromatic at times. The voices here are gorgeous, shimmering and often surprisingly percussive at times.

The modern pieces run the gamut of styles, and only one of them, Wie ein Kind, by Per Nørgard, seems out of place in this largely placid collection. It begins much like the other pieces, with languid, sustained tones, but then suddenly erupts into strange shrieks and moans, almost as if Cathy Berberian was on hand performing some sprechgesang. While the piece itself is striking, it seems stylistically too far removed from the rest of this collection to rest easily with the bulk of the program. Perhaps sequencing it at the end of the disc would have made it more palatable. As it is, it sits firmly in the middle of the tracks and it may be one that a lot of listeners will skip over, for better or worse, after they’ve sampled the rest of the album.

The magnum opus, relatively speaking, of Kind is an interesting setting of William Butler Yeats’ The Stolen Child, by young composer Marcus Paus. In fact Ensemble 96 approached Paus with a commission to write a piece for the choral ensemble and string quartet, a perhaps odd pairing that is rather sparsely represented (as you might imagine) in contemporary choral literature. Paus discovered the Yeats poem, was struck by it, and that colored the entire release, which soon became focused on children as its subject matter. As with the Yeats piece, all of the selections on Kind deal in a certain type of “melancholy, fear and unrest” (to quote the disc’s liner notes) which may remind some listeners of the mood of another famous “kind”, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.

This is yet another brilliant release from 2L, a label which continues to amaze with one astounding release after another. Blu-ray audio hasn’t yet become an industry standard, and who knows what the future will bring for a world that is perhaps more finely attuned to the visual than the aural? One hopes that a niche label like 2L can find the audience it deserves. Kind is one of the most consistently challenging and gorgeous choral releases of the past several years, and aficionados of modern ensemble singing will hopefully flock to it like children to their mothers’ arms.

Kind contains the following selections:

Sov, Sov, Liten Gut (Traditional)
Die Stimme des Kindes by Jaakko Mantyjarvi
Bansull (Traditional)
Wie ein Kind by Per Norgård
Bia, Bia Lite Ban (Traditional)
The Stolen Child by Marcus Paus
Bansull fra Telemark (Traditional)
Bysjan, Bysjan Lite Ban (Traditional)

Kind Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Once again 2L has provided an absolutely reference quality audio Blu-ray. 2L's Morten Lindberg (one of the two "L"'s, in case you didn't know) serves once again as engineer and producer and his work here is admirable in every department. Lindberg doesn't hold back on the technical side of things with this recording, delivering two perfect lossless tracks, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0 mix and an LPCM 2.0, both 24 bit 192kHz. The music here is thrillingly present. 2L prefers to record in "spacious acoustic settings," and that incredible breathing space is noticeable in every track on this Blu-ray. Per the insert booklet's notes, "This recording was made by Lindberg LYd with DPA microphones, Millennia Media amplifiers and SPHYNX2 convertors t a PYRAMIX workstation. Digital eXtreme Definition is a professional audio format that brings 'analogue' qualities in 24 bit at 352.8kHz sampling rate. DXD preserves 8.4672 Mbits/s (3 times the data of DSD) per channel. This leaves headroom for editing and balancing before quantizing to DSD for SACD or PCM for Blu-ray." For those of you not conversant in "tech speak," what that means is not only is this sampled at an insanely high resolution, Lindberg doesn't sacrifice warmth or a "natural" sound in this all digital world. Kind is a glittering example of what Blu-ray audio can be, and anyone with even a passing interest in this new sonic medium should check out any 2L disc to realize the purity of sound and clarity of fidelity that's available.

Kind Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As with other 2L releases, a companion SACD version of the program is included with the Blu-ray.

Kind Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Take a chance on composers and arrangers you've probably never heard of, and a choral group with whom you may only have a passing familiarity. Kind offers gorgeous music in a sumptuous sonic environment. Blu-ray audio still hasn't gotten the acceptance it's due, but this new recording proves why BD audio really should become the new standard. Highly recommended.