Cappella Amsterdam and its artistic leader Daniel Reuss return to PENTATONE with a world premiere recording of David Lang’s the writings. For this cycle, Lang has chosen five texts from the Old Testament tied to Jewish holidays. These writings share a universal appeal, a focus on what it means to be human. Lang’s austere and repetitive score makes a profound emotional impact, fully in line with the poetry of the subjects recited. This album comes with insightful program notes by the composer, as well as an evocative analysis by his esteemed colleague Nico Muhly.

Since its foundation in 1970, Cappella Amsterdam has shown an exceptional mastery of contemporary and early vocal music, with acclaimed excurses to Romantic repertoire as well. Daniel Reuss has been Artistic Leader of Cappella Amsterdam for over three decades now, and has worked with several renowned choirs and ensembles. Their PENTATONE debut album In Umbra Mortis (2021) won an Edison Klassiek Award. Multiple award-winning composer David Lang is one of America’s most performed composers, whose deceptively simple pieces can be fiendishly difficult to play, requiring incredible concentration by musicians and audiences alike.

REVIEWS:

Assembled over 14 years, the writings is a collection of settings of texts from the Hebrew Bible that are particularly associated with holidays; they are enchanted unaccompanied choral pieces, jewel-like in their crystalline beauty and performed with just the right degree of gentle detachment by Cappella Amsterdam under Daniel Reuss.

-- The Guardian

This stunning disc features the Cappella Amsterdam ensemble on a world-premiere recording of David Lang’s The Writings, a cycle of choral works based on selections from the Hebrew Bible. Each of the scriptural extracts is associated with a different Jewish holiday, the work as a whole creating a sort of map of the Jewish liturgical year from Sukkot (a weeklong holiday during which ancient Israelites were expected to travel to the temple in Jerusalem) to Tisha B’Av (which commemorates the destruction of both Solomon’s Temple and the Second Temple). The music is, as one might expect, solemn in tone and cyclical in structure; perhaps a bit more surprisingly, it is also consistently consonant and tonal — though the mood is often dark and brooding, there is always light peeking through, and the performances by Cappella Amsterdam are absolutely exquisite.

-- Baker & Taylor CD Hotlist