RECORD REVIEWS
I’ll admit to a conflict of interest in choosing as Recording of the Month a work co-engineered by our very own John Atkinson. We—I, who nominated the piece, and Editor Jim Austin, who ultimately chose the winner—have both worked with John for years. And I’d never deny it was moving to sit next to him during his recent visit to Port Townsend following the release party for this new album, Translations,1 watching him shed tears as we listened together to the heavenly voices of the Portland State Chamber Choir singing “In paradisum” (2012), which Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds dedicated to his grandmother, who died the morning of the premiere.
But to dismiss this Recording of the Month selection as an inside job is to overlook some essential facts: The music is gorgeous, filled with an ethereal beauty that speaks to me of celestial realms. The singing is equal in quality to the finest I’ve heard on record. And the recording quality is exemplary: If Translations were available in even higher resolutions than 24/96, I would have rated it 5 stars for sonics instead of 4.5, something I very rarely do.
The album’s seven compositions address “translation,” which PSCC choir director Ethan Sperry describes as “the transformations that occur within us when we encounter the power of nature, legends, or the divine.” Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Peterson, whose poetry Ešenvalds set to music on two of these tracks, explains further: “Art translates mystery for us without destroying that mystery.”
The opening track, “O salutaris hostia,” sets text by St. Thomas Aquinas. The choir, placed far behind the pristine voices of sopranos Kate Ledington and Maeve Stier, creates a soft cushion of air underneath the women’s voices as they float heavenward, a prayer of peace. As the tracks unfold, we discover Ešenvalds’s unique use of dissonance and frequent changes of key or mode Ešenvalds places a soloist in the foreground, supported by a background choir and the otherworldly shimmering sounds of handbells bowed by wooden rods.
