Polyphony / Stephen Layton ARVO PÄRT Triodion

There's a line in this disc's title track, from an Orthodox ode addressed to Saint Nicholas: "therewithal hast thou acquired: by humility - greatness, by poverty - riches." This might have been written about Arvo Pärt's compositional technique, here liberated from the minimalist strictures of earlier decades, treading a fine line between agony and ecstasy in a way unparalleled since Bach.

In his earlier vein, Pärt often reached spiritual feast through the technical famine of systematic patterning and repetition. In the music on this new CD, all composed between 1996 and 2002 and featuring six première recordings, Pärt instead suggests austerity through the use of a much broader and freer palette. This is particularly palpable in the Nunc Dimittis, where gorgeous textures, harmonies and sonorities conjure a feeling of purity and emptiness.

Elsewhere, Pärt has a couple of surprises up his sleeve. The opening track, Dopo la vittoria, begins in sprightly madrigalian form, entirely appropriate to a commission from the City of Milan. It sets an Italian text describing the conception of the Te Deum by Saints Ambrose and Augustine, an unusually postmodern exercise for Pärt, but one which does nothing to detract from the sincerity of the setting, suggesting instead a celebration of the sanctifying power of centuries of worshipful use.

The weirdest moment on the disc comes with My heart's in the Highlands, a setting of a Burns poem which apparently has a highly personal significance for the composer. It's one of only two tracks on the disc which recall Pärt's earlier, more systematic approach, giving Burns' wistful evocation of the bucolic North to a monotone counter-tenor over a strictly controlled organ accompaniment, and making the text suddenly sound like a mystical allegory of longing for the divine.

There's little of the balletic brilliance that Pärt displayed in such works as the Stabat Mater or Tabula Rasa, and mercifully as little of the thunderous severity of his Passio mode. Instead there's a quiet and cumulative power to these works, given performances of luminous purity by Polyphony and Stephen Layton. By the time we arrive at the Salve Regina, a kind of penitential cradle song which closes the disc, we're ready to fall at the feet of the Maker and beg for forgiveness, simultaneously harrowed and consoled. (BBC Music)

Polyphony / Stephen Layton KARL JENKINS Motets

 Following the huge success of over 2 million records sold with critically acclaimed albums such as Adiemus, The Armed Man, The Peacemakers and Requiem, Karl Jenkins presents his brand new album!

Motets is an intimate a capella album that features stunning new choral adaptions of Jenkins’ previous hit compositions and marks the year of his 70th birthday and fifty years of his career in music.

As a composer and a brand – a brand that stands for an epic sound that connects with people from all different age groups on a spiritual level - Karl Jenkins remains one of the most performed living composers in the world today. The concept Motets goes back in time and celebrates his hits from the past in a newly arranged intimate sound – accessible, performable, emotional.

Recent reviews declare Polyphony “one of the best small choirs now before the public” (Telegraph) and “possibly the best small professional chorus in the world” (Encore Magazine, USA)

Carolyn Sampson / Britten Sinfonia / Stephen Layton EŠENVALDS Passion and Resurrection

Australian concert-goers have sampled the mesmerising choral sound of the Baltic as championed by Stephen Layton in 2010. Now Layton and his British group Polyphony introduce the young Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds, whose a cappella and accompanied choral works are accessible for their heartfelt expressions of suffering and joy.

The Latvian struggle for independence from the Soviet Union has been dubbed the “Singing Revolution”, in which freedom fighters raised their voices in a chorus of forbidden songs.

His Passion draws on sacred texts in English and Latin, and the impossibly pure Polyphony tone wrings devastating emotional impact from every syllable. The warm plainchant opening is gradually submerged in glassy string dissonance from the Britten Sinfonia. Extreme changes of mood and atmosphere fade seamlessly into one another so that the climax’s stormy repetitions of “crucify!” lull themselves into the gentlest of prayers.

Carolyn Sampson’s haunting, at times visceral soprano solos place Passion and Resurrection alongside other contemporary classics like Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The works on the album pay tribute to womankind, from soaring soprano lines to texts by American women poets and Mother Teresa, as well as depictions of Mary Magdalene and the stabat mater.

The Sara Teasdale setting Evening describes a “chorus of shimmering sound”, a phrase that equally applies to the disc as a whole. Two decades have passed since Latvia achieved independence but we are still hearing a “singing revolution”, with Esenvalds leading the charge. (Copyright © Limelight Magazine).