The…disc reveals the stunning variety and vitality of North European choral music today.
Praulins’s The Nightingale rightly leads off the program. The composer’s background in progressive and heavy-metal rock bands, Latvian folk music and ritual, film and television scoring, and Renaissance counterpoint has enabled him to produce a continuously changing tapestry of sound that nevertheless hangs together remarkably well, effortlessly expressing the fancy in the Andersen fragments.
The other…selections more than hold their own in this distinguished company. Börtz’s Nemesis divina, based on philosophic writings by the eighteenth century botanist Carl Linnaeus…
Everything was recorded in the resonant space of Copenhagen’s Christianskirken, but fortunately the acoustic enlivens the sound of the twenty-voice choir and the soloist rather than swamping them in sonic mud. The vocal soloists are drawn from the choir and do a superb job, as did conductor Layton. This was probably the single most enjoyable choral recording I encountered in 2011. One can only hope that the music will be more widely performed… © 2012 Choral Journal
Lawrence Schenbeck