The choir Gloriae dei Cantores and its director, Richard K. Pugsley, have emerged as prominent American champions of Arvo Parts music, with a distinctive sound to match. This recording, featuring Parts choral arrangement of his own substantial Stabat Mater, is especially recommended to those outside North America, who may not have encountered approaches to Part beyond those of technically flawless Baltic choirs or ethereal British all-male cathedral groups. Here, richness of tone is prioritized over blend, and the listener can hear individual voices in the 40-member choir. It brings a fresh feel to Part, more passionate and intimate than usual, and less abstractly minimalist. Beyond this, the program recommends this album to listeners, for it gives the lie to the myth of an essential homogeneity in Parts production. There is a mysterious evocation of chant in the Salve Regina, declamatory and narrative structure in Labbe Agathon, compact and motet-like structures in the opening English-language Peace upon You, Jerusalem, and the Nunc dimittis (not part of a pair with the preceding Magnificat), and the verse-determined shape of the Stabat Mater, one of Parts major works. It adds up to a fresh, satisfying Part collection, once again beautifully recorded far from the centers of sound engineering wizardry at the choirs home base, the Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, Massachusetts. Although designated an EP in catalogs, this album contains more than an hour of music and is a cohesive full-length whole.

Rovi