Composer
Eric Whitacre has gained wide popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and a partnership between him and a vocal ensemble of the high caliber of
Voces8 would be noteworthy on its face. The works on the album, which landed on classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2023, span various periods of
Whitacre's career, and
Voces8 achieves liquid performances of classic-style
Whitacre works like the opening
Go, Lovely Rose. The real news here, however, is the presence of a major recent work;
The Sacred Veil was composed in 2018 and has been recorded once before, with
Whitacre himself leading the
Los Angeles Master Chorale. Listeners may well wish to compare the two versions, for this is a major piece of choral music that will be around for decades. The texts by
Whitacre collaborator
Charles Anthony Silvestri describe in detail the death of
Silvestri's wife from cancer; composer and poet shaped the music as the poetry appeared. 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. ~ James Manheim
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