Eric Whitacre & VOCES8 Home 2LP

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Two branches of choral royalty entwine with majestic harmony on this release from Grammy-winning composer Eric Whitacre and acclaimed vocal ensemble VOCES8. The album includes a world premiere, "All Seems Beautiful to Me" and a new recording of Whitacre's deeply moving 2019 cantata "The Sacred Veil."

The five-minute work "All Seems Beautiful to Me" is based on a poem by Walt Whitman (from "Song of the Open Road") celebrating the human spirit's capacity for generosity and growth. It was commissioned by the United States Air Force Band and here receives its world premiere recording. Also included is a new recording of one of Whitacre's most frequently performed and much loved pieces, "The Seal Lullaby."

The album also includes "Sing Gently" and "Go, Lovely Rose." The former was composed during lockdown specially for Whitacre's Virtual Choir, made up of over 17,500 singers from 124 different countries. The latter was Whitacre's first-ever composition, written 30 years ago, and thus the album is also, in part, a joyful celebration of his three decades as a composer.

The longest work is the twelve-movement, hour-long 2019 cantata The Sacred Veil for choir, cello (Emma Denton), and piano (Christopher Glynn). The text, by Whitacre's close friend and longtime collaborator Charles Anthony Silvestri, commemorates the death of the poet's young wife Julie from ovarian cancer. It journeys from the growth of their love, through the birth of their children, to their struggle with the illness. One particularly striking section, "You Rise, I Fall," involves extraordinary descending and ascending tone-clusters mirroring the emotional states of the dying woman and her husband.

This is, needless to say, strong stuff. Whitacre forges a distinctively dark language that is related to but distinct from his usual style, something like the somber language used by Renaissance composers for serious texts. Whitacre hollows out and grows his lines, expanding passages of common practice tonality into new depths and adding some intense dissonances. The Sacred Veil of the title refers to nothing less than the boundary between life and death, and both composer and choir rise to the occasion here with intensely powerful renderings. The sound from the choir's own Voces8 Centre is superb. This is just the second performance of The Sacred Veil, but it opens new perspectives on the work, and it will not be the last.