The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and Grete Pedersen have made acclaimed recordings of music spanning a millennium – from chants by Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) to the most recent compositions – and in styles ranging from folk songs to Bach motets and Berio’s Coro. On their new album, the focus is on contemporary Norwegian music, with three works which all originate in words and challenge the relation between language and music. For his Lament from 2015, Lars Petter Hagen has chosen to set a short text by E. E. Cummings, written when the poet was 6 years old. The words of the poem are split up and stretched out into pulsating waves of grief, at once mysterious, beautiful and painful. Awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2018, Muohta (Snow) consists of 18 sections, each setting a single word in Sámi, the language of the indigenous people in the north of Norway. The words are all related to snow, and composer Nils Henrik Asheim has found inspiration in how indigenous peoples live with nature, as opposed to seeking to control it.

Following their 11-album cycle of Mozart’s piano concertos recorded with Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens in 2017 released an album with two of Mozart’s best-loved serenades: the Posthorn Serenade and Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The result was warmly received, for instance in the French magazine Classica where it was described as ‘a truly attractive disc to chase away the gloom’ and on MusicWeb-International.com: ‘Die Kölner Akademie … demonstrate once again that they are amongst the best groups in the world of period performance’. Joined by the tenor John Heuzenroeder and the male voices of the Kölner Akademie Choir, the team has now recorded the music that Mozart wrote for performance at Masonic gatherings. Mozart was himself a Mason during the last seven years of his life, and composed a number of songs and cantatas for various occasions. Best-known is probably the Masonic Funeral Music, K477, heard here in a version – ‘Meistermusik’ – devised by the Mozart scholar Philippe Autexier in an attempt to reconstruct the original performance of the piece. Also included are the four orchestral interludes to the play Thamos, König in Ägypten, fine examples of Mozart’s music in the ‘Sturm und Drang’ tradition. Thamos was written by the poet and Mason Tobias von Gebler, and parallels have frequently been drawn between it and the more overtly Masonic Magic Flute.

Krzysztof Penderecki's setting of the Passion story as told in the Gospel of St Luke was premièred in 1966 and immediately established a place for itself among the most important large-scale choral works of the twentieth century. Despite its decidedly modernist idiom, the music’s emotional power, glowing colors and sonic impact spoke to audiences as well as critics, one of whom described St Luke's Passion as ‘the most important bridge between the spirit of the liturgy and modern music.’

Strongly influenced by the Passions of J. S. Bach, Penderecki pays homage to the great composer by using the B-A-C-H motif throughout the work, and like Bach he has arranged his Passion in two parts, with monumental choral numbers framing the whole. The score is for large forces including an extended orchestra, three mixed choirs, plus a boys’ choir, speaker and three vocal soloists (soprano, baritone and bass). On 20th July 2018 these all convened at the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg: l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal with their principal conductor Kent Nagano, the Warsaw Boys Choir and Kraków Philharmonic Chorus, the three soloists and the actor Slawomir Holland. The occasion was the opening concert of the Salzburg Festival, and in the audience was the composer himself, Krzysztof Penderecki. Present was also a recording team led by Robert Suff, senior producer at BIS, and this album is the document of this very special occasion.

Since the 1960s, the Swedish Radio Choir has been recognized as a - not to say the - world-leading a cappella choir. Made up of 33 professional singers, the choir has been engaged by some of today's leading conductors, such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen, for concerts, tours and recordings. This success story began in 1952 when the legendary choir conductor Eric Ericson became principal conductor of the choir. When the Estonian conductor Tõnu Kaljuste became the choir's first non-Swedish principal conductor, he introduced the choir to new repertoire in a particularly exciting collaboration. It is the fruits of this we can enjoy on the present disc: three works on sacred themes by Kaljuste's compatriot Arvo Pärt (of which one, Dopo la vittoria, was dedicated to Kaljuste and the Swedish Radio Choir) and Alfred Schnittke's short Voices of Nature and monumental Concerto for Choir. Using texts by the 10th century Armenian mystic Gregory of Narek - in a Russian translation - the 40-minute long Concerto has become a classic in the modern repertoire for choir. In several ways the work invokes the music of the Russian Orthodox Church, and in fact, Schnittke was reluctant to publish the work outside of Russia, as he feared that non-Russian performances would lack religious intensity. But as anyone will know who has listened to the Swedish Radio Choir's previous BIS release (BIS-CD-1048), such fears would be groundless in the circumstances. The choir's interpretation of Bengt Hambræus's Apocalipsis was described as 'breathtakingly exciting' by the critics - and their performance of the music of Schnittke and Pärt will surely make as big an impact. It is with great pride that BIS resumes the collaboration with the Swedish Radio Choir - with a recording of the Requiems by Duruflé and Fauré to look forward to!.

Dividing his time between the United States and the United Kingdom, the composer Geoffrey Gordon writes music that has been described as ‘darkly seductive’ (New York Times), ‘richly satisfying’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘iridescent and fierce’ (The Chicago Tribune). The present album brings together three of his recent works, all composed between 2013 and 2018 for the soloist recording them here, the Danish cellist Toke Møldrup. In several of his works, Gordon takes his inspiration from other art forms – sculptures by Giacometti, a self portrait by Warhol, a children’s picture book by Maurice Sendak. The works gathered here are inspired by or reactions to three literary masterworks. The ‘creative blueprint’ for the opening work, the Cello Concerto, is the novel Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann. Organized into a Prologue and Seven Episodes, the work traces the progress of Mann’s protagonist Adrian Leverkühn from innocence to madness, with the cello both embodying and (occasionally) commenting on the proceedings. For this recording, Møldrup receives the support of the Copenhagen Phil and conductor Lan Shui. In the score of Fathoms, Gordon’s sonata for cello and piano, each of the five movements is headed with a quotation from Shakespeare’s The Tempest which sets the scene for the musical impression that follows. Here Møldrup is joined by the American pianist Steven Beck. The amply-filled album closes with Ode to a Nightingale, with the words of John Keat’s immortal poem heard from the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir, and given emphasis by Toke Møldrup’s obbligato cello.

Allmanna Sangen began its existence as a male-voice choir affiliated to the University of Uppsala in 1830, but was reformed as a mixed choir in 1963. Ever since, the choir has expanded its repertoire and stylistic range, often surprising audiences with its unconventional approach to familiar works and with collaborations across genres. On Femina moderna, the choir and its conductor Maria Goundorina present a programme with recent works by Swedish and international women composers: no less than ten of the thirteen works included were written in 2000 or later. Most recently composed is Anna Karin Klockar’s Speeches which in 2016 won first prize in a competition for women composers arranged by the choir. The competition, the Allmanna Sangen & Anders Wall Composition Award, was first held in 2014 in celebration of the choir’s 50th anniversary as a mixed choir. The winning work on that occasion, Sandskrift by Maria Lofberg, is also included on this disc, along with pieces by composers such as Lera Auerbach and Libby Larsen, Cecilia McDowall, Galina Grigorjeva, and Nana Forte.