Saint Louis Passions

Carter Datz Alleluia! A new work is come on hand Kerensa Briggs Seeking you; Seóirse Bodley Love after Chagall; Orlando Lassus Forte soporifera; Francis Pott* Ardor amoris; Ugis Praulins Odi et amo; Trent Reznor arr Melissa Dunphy Hurt; Right where it belongs; Sasha Johnson Manning Miss me, but let me go; Taylor Swift arr Orin Johnson Carolina from Where the Crawdads Sing; Carl Orff Catulli carmina: Mårten Jansson Tonight I dance alone;

The Saint Louis Chamber Chorus
directed by Philip Barnes. Diana Umali piano

REGCD597 Regent Records
https://www.regent-records.co.uk/

Released to coincide with Valentine's Day, this latest recording from the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus offers an imaginative meditation on love in all its guises—passionate and tender, sacred and profane, timeless and contemporary. Under Philip Barnes's direction, one of America's finest choral ensembles navigates a programme spanning five centuries, from Renaissance masters to commissions by living composers, several receiving their première recordings.

The album's framework is provided by Francis Pott's six-part cycle Ardor amoris (The Burning Heat of Love), commissioned by long-time choir members Bruce and Linda Ryder as a celebration of their own enduring partnership. Pott sets texts by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Herrick, Alice Meynell, and James Elroy Flecker; the cycle is bookended by references to "love's eternity." These songs are ingeniously interspersed among complementary works by Carter Datz, Kerensa Briggs, Seóirse Bodley, Ugis Praulins and Sasha Johnson Manning, along with historical touchstones from Orlando Lassus and Jacob Handl.

The programme also incorporates newly commissioned choral arrangements of contemporary popular songs—Taylor Swift's haunting folk ballad Carolina, in Orin Johnson's sensitive setting, and Trent Reznor's Right Where It Belongs. Both translations succeed admirably, the former's wistful melody proving particularly apt for choral treatment.

The collection takes its visual inspiration from Frederic Leighton's Victorian painting depicting Catullus's lovers Acme and Septimius—an appropriate introduction to an album that draws connections across cultures and centuries.

Barnes elicits singing as warm as the subject matter itself. The choir's tone is consistently beautiful, their precision, diction and dynamic shading are executed with passion and intelligence. Balance and blend are exemplary throughout, whether navigating Pott's intimate word-painting or the more robust demands of Mårten Jansson's Tonight I Dance Alone and Handl's Odi et amo. The ensemble conveys each piece's distinctive character with remarkable sensitivity, drawing the listener into their expressive world.

Diana Umali's well-judged piano accompaniment in the final Pott song provides the perfect valediction to a disc that celebrates both the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus's longstanding commitment to new music—their Composer-in-Residence scheme has nurtured talents including Manning, Melissa Dunphy, Jansson and Briggs—and the enduring power of love itself, captured across half a millennium of musical expression.