Eriks Ešenvalds: There Will Come Soft Rains
Signum Classics

Portland State University Chamber Choir: Translations
Naxos

Could there be another composer whose music singers love performing more than Eriks Ešenvalds? Stirring the soul with swelling vocal textures, his material manages to sound wholly contemporary yet at the same time feel as if it's been with us for centuries. Two recent collections do nothing but add to the reputation the Priekule, Latvia-born composer's established and offer further evidence of his choral mastery. If there's singing in heaven, Ešenvalds' music is probably the closest earthly approximation to it.

Issued first, There Will Come Soft Rains features fourteen pieces, twelve originals and arrangements by Ešenvalds of “My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose” and “Amazing Grace,” performed by The Choir of the West under conductor Richard Nance's direction. Founded in 1926, the choir is the premier choral ensemble of the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Like the choir, Ešenvalds has won numerous awards, including the Latvian Grand Music Award in 2005, 2007, and 2015, and also has seen his music appear on labels such as Hyperion, Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, and Signum Classics. Appearing on this seventy-one-minute set are thirty-four singers (including guest soprano Jennifer Gorham) and instrumentalists credited with bass flute, jaw harp, whistling, guitars, and sopranino recorder.

The beauty of Ešenvalds' music is evident the moment “There Will Come Soft Rains” opens the recording with the choir's haunting, hushed tones. In the quieter moments, the graceful blend of female and male voices is sublime (inspired by Sara Teasdale's text, the composer “imagined the voices of the singers swaying like the wheat crop gently in the wind”), but the section where they collectively ascend into the upper register is even more glorious; even at this early juncture, one is awestruck by the music. In contrast to the generally peaceful character of the opener, “The New Moon” begins aggressively before the intensity dissipates for an equally peaceful second half with subtle instrumental accompaniment enhancing the soft vocalizations.

Instrumental touches emerge throughout that add considerably to the recording's impact, from bass flute and chimes in “Long Road” and the twang of the jaw harp in “Rivers of Light” to whistling (intended to be by Romeo) in “O, She Doth Teach the Torches to Burn Bright” and the lonely call of the sopranino recorder in “My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose.” A folk dimension also surfaces in “Rivers of Light,” where texts from two Sámi folksongs are quoted, and in “Northern Lights,” inspired by a Latvian folksong and writings about the Aurora Borealis by two Arctic explorers. Using text from Romeo & Juliet and featuring a moving lead vocal by tenor Joshua Carlisle, “O, She Doth Teach the Torches to Burn Bright” exudes a Renaissance folk quality in using dance rhythms beaten by tambourine.

Certainly one of the album's most stirring pieces is “Long Road,” whose text by the late poet Paulina Barda concerns the idea of her ‘meeting' her late husband when gazing at the stars during dark nights. Longing pours from Ešenvalds' setting, his at times mystical music a perfect complement to the text's expressions of love. Rivaling it for loveliness is “Only in Sleep,” an elegiac setting (text again by Teasdale) whose soaring melodies are delivered magnificently by the choir and soprano Natalie Breshears. The alternation in lamenting phrases between the baritone and soprano during “A Soldier's Mother's Lullaby,” the melancholic lilt in “Spring Rain,” nostalgic sweetness in “In My Little Picture Frame,” the uplifting reinvention of “Amazing Grace”—memorable moments abound.

Translations is The Portland State Chamber Choir's second Ešenvalds set, the group's acclaimed first, The Doors of Heaven, having appeared in 2017. Whereas fourteen pieces appear on There Will Come Soft Rains, the hour-long Translations features seven, including a world-premiere recording of the title track. The album title wasn't arbitrarily chosen, ‘translation' in this context referring to the transformations we experience in dealing with nature, legends, and the divine. Recorded last year at St Mary's Catholic Church in Mount Angel, Oregon, Translations finds the choir, which was founded in 1975 and has earned more than thirty medals and awards in international choir competitions, conducted by Ethan Sperry, the Barre Stoll Professor of Choral Music at Portland State University.

There are commonalities between Translations and There Will Come Soft Rains: a small number of instrumental sounds appears on Translations, with handbells, glockenspiel, vibraphone, viola, and cello enhancing the pieces on which they appear; and a folk dimension also emerges, most conspicuously in "Legend of the Walled-In Woman," its text derived from the Albanian folk song “Vendit Tem” (‘My Land') by Martin Camaj. The album follows an interesting trajectory in that in almost every case a track is followed by one of longer duration, such that the opening four-minute piece eventually culminates in three settings lasting a dozen minutes each.

A gorgeous prayer for peace with text by St Thomas Aquinas, "O salutaris hostia" opens Translations on a rapturous high with sopranos Kate Ledington and Maeve Stier heard first antiphonally and then in duet, their angelic voices joined by a choir that expands from upper voices to an eight-part presentation; pitched at a hush, the performance gradually builds to a controlled climax before a resolution and concluding “Amen” bring it to an exquisite close. Two settings feature texts by Paulann Petersen, the first “The Heavens' Flock,” a moving reverie whose narrator likens himself to a humble shepherd while describing the stars as heavens' flock, “tangling your pale wool across the night sky,” and the second, “Translation,” a quietly ravishing setting featuring four vocal soloists accompanied by a five-part background choir. Here the album theme is instantiated directly, with words focusing on the moon and how its “face awaits the touch of a pen.” The subsequent “My Thoughts” confronts the theme in a different way, with the text, the preface of Saint Silouan the Athonite's treatise My Soul is Crying to the Whole World, having to do with the author's belief that though his thoughts come to him in perfect form from God, being human means his attempt to translate such divine ideas can only be imperfect.

On "Vineta," the first of the three concluding twelve-minute settings, the choir's augmented by orchestral chimes, glockenspiel, and vibraphone, touches that distinguish the performance without intruding excessively upon it. Percussion punctuates the vocalizing, such that during some parts vibraphone (bowed and struck with mallets) and glockenspiel blend seamlessly with the vocal textures while in another the sopranos ascend to their highest pitches alongside cymbal shimmer.

In its text, the penultimate setting, "Legend of the Walled-In Woman," recounts the tale of three brothers building a fortress to protect against invaders, only to discover each morning that the previous day's work has been ruined. After their mother has a dream that indicates one brother must wall his wife alive within the fortress to keep it standing, the brothers cede the choice to fate, deciding that the wife who brings food to the brothers the next day will be the one walled-in; however, the older brothers cheat by warning their spouses, whereas the youngest keeps his word. His wife, Rozafa, accepts her fate but asks that her right eye remain exposed to still see her infant son, her right breast remain exposed to feed him, and her right foot be left free to rock his cradle. Passages of wordless singing lend the piece an ethereal and even foreboding quality as dissonant tonalities surface until the performance ends with a funeral march sung by the chorus and two soprano soloists, the latter representing the older brothers' wives mourning Rozafa.

Translations ends as movingly as it begins, with "In paradisum" augmenting a mostly wordless choir with viola and cello playing. Composed in memory of Ešenvalds' grandmother, the setting differs from the others in altering the balance between voices and instruments, the strings featured so prominently that In paradisum almost registers, in Ethan Sperry's words, as a “concerto for viola and cello with the choir serving as the orchestra.” Reinforcing that impression is the fact that the choir enunciates words in only a few places, its singing largely wordless and homophonic.

Both recordings are so satisfying, it makes little sense to favour one over the other or attempt to determine the superiority of one to the other. Anyone who's been previously seduced by Ešenvalds' music shouldn't waste time deciding between them when both are indispensable. Whether we're talking about individual soloists or the ensemble as a whole, the lustrous vocal performances The Choir of the West and The Portland State Chamber Choir bring to the composer's music makes for ultra-rewarding listening experiences.

March 2020