Et Lux

   in Choir & Organ (Sep, 2015)
Beautiful, bleak and brawny, Et Lux – Wolfgang Rihm’s bravura take on the Requiem Mass – makes its first appearance on disc in quietly dramatic, finely delineated performances. Composed in 2009 for string quartet and four-part mixed voices, the hugely contrasted, hour-long piece is as much an interrogation of liturgical tropes as an invocation of them. Cleverly, Paul Van Nevel doubles the vocal parts, lending them a heavenly choral aura wholly in keeping with Rihm’s intentions. Pitted against the Minguet Quartett’s contemporary sensibilities – shifting between tender supplication and confrontational toughness – the textured renaissance richness of the Huelgas Ensemble is thrown into sharply acidic relief. Atmospherically recorded, with poetically pointed …