Gentle Dark

Gregory W. Brown Gentle Dark; The Road to Where You Are Eleanor Daley Requiem; —


Skylark Vocal Ensemble Matthew Guard conductor and artistic director.

Soloists: Addy Sterrett, Matthew Goinz, Clare Brussel, Sarah Moyer
Released via LSO Live ARR0006

Some choirs impress you with their power, others with their polish. Skylark Vocal Ensemble does both, and this is a tremendous disc for anyone who cherishes choral singing of the highest calibre.

Under its artistic director Matthew Guard, the ensemble pairs music by two composers from either side of the North American border, Gregory W. Brown and Eleanor Daley. The spirit of Herbert Howells hovers over this programme, and as an organist who has spent more hours than I care to admit in the company of his music, I listened with particular interest. Howells’s own Requiem, with its grief transfigured into luminous, aching harmony, has shaped generations of choral writers, and its fingerprints are evident here in the way chords bloom and dissolve and in melodies that seem to rise from the very texture of the music.

Brown’s Gentle Dark takes its words from James Agee, the American writer best remembered for his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Death in the Family, whose writing has a lyrical sweep that suits choral treatment remarkably well. Brown answers it with music that breathes and roams freely, conjuring vivid pictures in sound, and this disc marks the first time it has been recorded. Daley’s Requiem, meanwhile, has never until now been set down in full by professional singers, a curious omission given how often her music appears on choir stands.

What strikes you first is the technique. The accuracy is superb, and the voices are balanced with the kind of independence a fine pianist brings to the keyboard, where the left hand can be shaded beneath the right while the two still sing as one. Skylark achieves the same effect: each part has its own character, yet nothing ever pulls against the whole.

The basses provide a resonant foundation without ever turning to mud, and the overall blend makes for an ensemble that is as close to ideal as you are likely to find. Awkward intervals are dispatched with ease, the intonation is unerring, dynamics are judged with real subtlety and the diction is admirably clear, so Agee’s words register without strain. There is rhythmic energy, too, a welcome antidote to the reverent torpor that can afflict recordings of music in this vein, and moments of sheer beauty where the sound seems to hang in the air like breath on a winter morning.

Brown and Daley could hardly wish for more devoted advocates, and Skylark serves their music with a radiance that lingers long after the final chord.