Seven Responses

WQXR

“The album is characterized by a mournful stillness, as piece after piece seems to struggle against the passage of time itself with a sheer, glacial slowness of motion. Hans Thomalla's I come near you and Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Ad genua/To the knees seem to time-stretch, passing Baroque dissonances into collisions of ear-bending drones; Dog Days composer David T. Little's dress in magic amulets, dark, from My feet evokes the sludge of doom metal with acoustic voices and instruments.

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen's Ad cor stands out—mercurial, facetious and cynical, yet oddly moving—stands out from the earnest program, as does the dense dramatic cantata, Common Ground, by the American composer Lewis Spratlan.

The ethereal My soul will sink within me, by the Latvian composer Santa Ratniece, pushes the choir to its limits over the course of one long, sweeping movement, while To the Hands, by Spratlan's fellow Pulitzer laureate Caroline Shaw, offers an intense intimacy. With its short loops of material and subtle shifts of tone, it sounds almost private, like a bedroom demo recording extrapolated to majestic proportions—but it also, like so much of the music on this album, suggests a deep understanding and appreciation for the solemn 17th-century cycle that inspired it.” [FULL ARTICLE] - Daniel Stephen Johnson

ALL MUSIC GUIDE

“Each composer was given the latitude to work with his or her own librettists, resulting in a great variety of treatments. Consider Ad cor, by the late Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, where mockery is the aspect of the crucifixion addressed: the composer sets fragments of text like "I laugh at you mockingly." The composers come from many countries, but the program is framed by works of two Americans, a hot newcomer, Caroline Shaw, and a veteran, Lewis Spratlan, whose text is ecological in orientation. Shaw's work merges Baroque, medieval, and minimalist strands in a wholly novel way, with passages that almost seem to quote Philip Glass but diverge in ultimate effect. With some space available on both CDs, the compilers might have included the Buxtehude in at least excerpted form in order to show something of the stimulus for the contemporary composers. But this is an entirely novel work, quite convincingly performed by the musicians who commissioned it.” [Full Article] - James Manheim

KATHODIK

“The answers provided by the composers were summoned to unprecedented levels: artistically (both from the point of view of the music from that of the texts) interesting and original, humanly touching and profound. At more intimate compositions, in which the singing of polyphonic voices or unison is drawing relax emotional scenarios where the pain is channeled into the intimate beauty paths...Seven Responses - as the title of this unmissable double CD from Innova - questioning, surprise, shock, fascinate: an opportunity not to be missed for anyone looking for rewarding and challenging experiences in the world of contemporary music, to which The Crossing is providing valuable contributions.” [FULL ARTICLE] - Filippo Focosi