Eriks Esenvalds: St Luke Passion – Latvian Radio Choir

   in Choir & Organ (Sep, 2016)
This is an exceptional recording of exceptional music. Latvian composer Eriks Ešenvalds is steadily building a considerable reputation for himself (his first opera was successfully premiered in Riga earlier this year). Forty years old next year, Ešenvalds is fortunate to have among his home-grown supporters the excellent Latvian Radio Choir and their long-standing conductor Sigvards Klava. If the main piece is the strikingly rich Passion According to St Luke (2014), the most compositionally remarkable for this listener is The First Tears (2014), a setting of an Inuit folk tale. Ešenvalds evokes a powerful sense of eternal space in this work, with its rich vocal writing plus drum, bells, jaw harp, …