Light & Gold

Eric Whitacre’s shimmering close harmonies and sonorous choral textures appear to expand to the outer limits of the universe in this Spatial Audio remastering, carried across time and space by heavenly singing from the composer’s carefully chosen group of choristers. The album’s title-track Lux Aurumque, Latin for “Light and Gold”, creates conditions of sublime stillness and rapt concentration that remain at the heart of everything that follows, supporting the tender miniatures of Five Hebrew Love Songs, magnifying the drama of Whitacre’s setting of W.B. Yeats’ mystical The Stolen Child and generating feelings of ecstasy in Three Songs of Faith. Heartfelt sentiment stripped of sentimentality flows through The Seal Lullaby, while the testing a cappella hurdles of Nox Aurumque and Sleep are overcome with effortless ease to reveal emotional depths beneath them.