This is a unique recording production in many ways. Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen-Cabuli (b.1977), otherwise Tarja Turunen, has so far had three phases in her musical life. At age 3 she joined her local church choir in Finland and also took vocal lessons, often performing at school. She impressed her teachers with her ability to sing precisely in tune, and continued her musical education in the Secondary School of Art and Music at Savonlinna. Here she was attracted to music by Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Sarah Brightman and began to think that she might go in their musical direction. At 18, she entered the Sibelius Academy for further classical training.

In 1996, Tuomas Holopainen, a Finnish songwriter, multi-instrumentalist musician and record producer, invited Turunen to join his new acoustic mood music project, but he discovered that her trained voice had become too powerful and dramatic for accompanying guitars, which had to be changed to electric rather than acoustic. Holopainen finally decided to form a group called "Nightwish" as a metal band, with Turunen as a vocalist. Despite the band's success with its first disc, Turunen continued to sing classical material, performing at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, singing Wagner and Verdi arias. Enrolling in 2000 at the German music university Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, she worked to gain a professional qualification as a classical soloist with further specialization in art song, although still working on recordings with Holopainen. Turunen toured in South America with a classical lieder concert "Scandinavian Nights" and with the Nightwish band she began to gain a global reputation with further recordings made in Finland on her return.

In 2005 Turunen broke away from Nightwish, entering the third phase of her career, as an independent soloist. She began to write and record with various styles, including "symphonic metal". Success was signalled by reaching the number one spot on the Finnish charts and her records went platinum in Finland, double platinum in Russia and gold in Germany. A World tour with a support band of metal players followed in 2007, and another World Tour in 2012, where she gained the title of Europe's best cross-over performer.

Listening to her songs of the last few years, her style is of a heavy metal band with its highly amplified distortion, powerful and aggressive rhythms and the brazen attitude of punk, over which Turunen sings forth, using the power bestowed by her opera experience. Her lyrical vocals rather suggest Neo-Romanticism to me, and on paper the combination seems not to be a viable match, but in practice, her large following and demands for more recordings speak for her musical intuition.

Turunen still appears in purely classical engagements, but until now has not made a classical recording. In her notes at the end of the 'Ave Maria en plein air' booklet, she thanks Kalevi Kiviniemi (Finland's world famous organist) for pushing her to do this disc. I guess that he also helped when compiling a unique programme of Ave Maria songs from a range of over 150. As well as accompanying on the organ of Seinäjoki Lakeuden Risti church, Kiviniemi also made the arrangements of 6 songs from the 12 tracks, according to the booklet list. Apart from changing piano for organ, mostly this involves adding a harp, played by Kirsi Kiviharju (she is a free-lance chamber musician in Europe and has made many CDs with Kiviniemi) and/or a solo cello (player Marius Järvi, an Estonian who plays solo cello and is also in the Estonian National Opera Orchestra). In the booklet, individual superscript symbols are printed for each instrumentalist (and arrangements by Kiviniemi), in a row beside the listing for each Track, so the constitution of each work is easily discerned.

The combination of winds, plucked strings and bowed strings adds a rich accompaniment to Tarja's voice in its opera-mode. She reportedly has a 3 octave range, and although she is referred to as "soprano", my ears on this recording suggest a mezzo, especially in Tracks 1 and 5 where her chest voice is used. However, there are several challenging high notes which she hits perfectly, and her vibrato is well controlled and not over-used. Being immediately drawn to the beauty of her voice, I was also impressed by her sincerity and the intelligence applied to these quasi-religious scores, as well as her close interaction with her accompanists. She also instinctively uses the glorious acoustic of the church to float lines softly into the space or swell her voice to impressive climaxes, and in this her accompanying instrumentalists are ardent followers.

Although the Schubert song 'Ave Maria' is the most popular of its genre, Tarja has largely avoided choosing the "usual" versions, except the Bach-Gounod, which is second in popularity. Kiviniemi's adaptations are tasteful, avoiding sentimentality but applying accompaniments which give the cellist and harpist emotional solos in the form of introductions or postludes which adds to the richness and warmth of the whole enterprise. Piazzola's contribution (1984), for example, is of considerable interest, a gift to the Italian singer Milva. The composer told her to sing it whenever she felt it was time. She was 60 years old, in 2001, when she first sang it! Track 12 is an Ave Maria by Tarja herself, within the lyrical sphere of the other versions, arranged by Kiviniemi and played on the organ, with clever and subtle use of the church's Kangasala organ stops, including a bell chime. It begins by Tarja declaiming the Latin 'Ave Maria' in a sort of sprechstimme, before the organ comes in with a somewhat unsettling rolling rhythmic figure underpinning the soprano's cantabile line, which later soars out into the church with great conviction,even penetrating the organ's loud Plein Jeu. A suitable end to this unique record.

I found it amusing that the disc's one-gate Digipak contents reflect both the Rock and Classical worlds. The front cover and booklet (lodged in the pocket of the front cover) have blue, black and very faded colour photographs of Tarja Turunen wearing an imposing rock diva's gown and posing in sternly dramatic postures, against a blue-shade background of organ pipe ranks. There are arty full page renditions of an AM (Ave Maria) emblem, and the text pages have a thin line diagonally crossing every page. Since this is usually a typographic indication for a cancelled page, I found that rather off-putting! In the classical way, the full disposition of the organ is listed, with stop names and pipe lengths in the ranks, and there are paragraphs for each of the track contents. In the Rock mode, those responsible for Make up and Hair, TJ's clothes, vocal coach, Executive A&R consultant for earMusic and the Executive Producer from NEMS Enterprise SRL are all acknowledged. A cross-over booklet if ever there was one.

I have left my comments on the sonics to near the end of this review, but really it should have been first. In the first few seconds of the 5.0 multichannel track I was instantly transported into Lakeuden Risti church and its fabulous acoustics. This disc was recorded, edited and mastered by Mika Koivusalo, whose advocation of the high resolution format persuaded earMusik to make a multichannel recording. No doubt there were difficulties with such a reverberant space in balancing voice, harp, cello and large organ, all differently powered acoustically, with a relatively simple microphone array. Koivusalo has conquered all these problems, and the result is breathtaking surround sound which is as convincing as I have ever heard. Sound, singer, players and building are portrayed as one. One even becomes aware of the size and height of the building and the precise location of the musicians, and the ambience adds warmth, richness and depth to all the music. Changing from 5.0 to stereo almost collapsed the 3-D sound, but on its own, the stereo track is the best that could be produced, given the limitations of two speakers. A triumph for Koivusalo!

Going beyond the cross-over elements of this recording, 'Ave Maria in Plein Air' is a classical recording of high musicianship, sincerity, imagination and superb sonics which may also attract some of Tarja Turunen's usual followers and awake interest in the classics. Even on the RBCD layer, they will hear unusually fine sound. As a classical enthusiast, I hope that Tarja might make another classical recording, perhaps one of operatic arias. An enjoyable and unique production with superlative surround sound.

Copyright © 2015 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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