Customer Reviews
Beautiful album - By: Bridget O, 07 Oct 2008 
If you like listening or singing choral music you must own this CD. This is a beautiful album. One of the best pieces is A Boy & a Girl, a lyrical piece that is simply stunning. Eric Whitacre is growingin reputation as one of the best choral composers of this generation. This album cements that reputation.
dreary and irritating - By: J. F. Eardley, 01 May 2008 
I'm with Michael Hamilton on this one. Loads of polyphonyin search of a melody & most irritating, particularly track 6 (When David heard) where the interminable "My son" had me tearing my hair out(at least the bit that's left!) Save your money & try the excellent Polyphonyin " Nocturnes" or "Lux aeterna" by Morten Lauridson.
Divine - By: Sobainsky, 31 Dec 2007 I'm more a Reggae/Dub/Soul kind of guy but got intrigued by the other reviews while surfing through the amazon CD section & decided to buy it: A brilliant piece of art - divine is the best description! And I'm not even into classic stuff ...
like having your ears kissed by angels - By: Bernard Davis, 30 Dec 2007 I like to think of Eric Whitacre as the healthy face of modern music making. His shoulder length blond hair suggests a musical apprenticeshipin an early 90's grunge rock band. Things might have turned out that way, but everything changed on the day he joined the choir at college to check out the girls - & got entranced by the sound of Mozart's Requiem which they were rehearsing. His first works writtenin 1991 around age 21 that are included here: `I hide myself' (words by Emily Dickenson) & `Go, lovely rose' (words by Edward Waller), are squarelyin the area of American & British 20th century choral traditions, but already his ability to conjure up ravishing harmonies is evident.
From the first notes on this disc: a setting of e e cummings `I thank you God for this most amazing day', the music says ` classic choral composition'. It isn't so much that the music reminds the listener of any particular previous music, it is more that this composer has the elements of choral composition under his complete control & knows just how to bring voices together to produce this elusive transcendent sound. Some people hear echoes of Avro Part, but if anything Whitacre is the Anti-Part: where Part strives for simplicity Whitacre luxuriatesin richness. Listening to his music is like having your ears kissed by angels.
Near the centre of the disc are two longer settings. Track 6 `When David heard' gradually & insistently builds over its 13 minute length with the repeated affirmation `my son'. Track 8 `Cloudburst' is the most ambitious composition here with voices rising from speech into song, eventually joined by the clapping, finger clicking & thigh tapping of the singers to stimulate a rainstorm. It works incredibly well.
With 14 tracks & 70 minutes length one thing is obvious. For all Whitacre's command of voices he doesn't vary his time signatures much. Amongst 13 slow tempo compositions there is only 1 medium fast one, track 9 ` With a lilyin your hand', which brings a brief two & a half minute respite. I am not going to criticise this too much, no doubt it was never intended for all these works to be presented together, but a wider range of speeds would add further interest to the music.
The Polyphany choir under the direction of Stephen Layton do a wonderful job of interpreting the music. The disc was recordedin The Temple Churchin London, its voluminous interior provides a suitable acoustic for this music. Perhaps this is at the cost of hearing individual words annunciated, but the gain is a glorious richness & depth of tone.
Allin all a five star recording. If it all gets too much at one sitting the solution is easy - revelin itin smaller doses!
Don't buy it - By: Mr. Michael Hamilton, 01 Oct 2007 
A 'nice' choral sound, but terribly monotonous. Its really difficult to tell one sugary piece from the other. I only listened to the CD once.
