The Wrocław-based NFM Choir is no stranger to Bob Chilcott’s music, having previously recorded an acclaimed album of his a cappella works, ‘The Seeds of Stars’ (Signum, 4/13). This new release, recorded in 2019, features a programme centred on the thread of ‘darkness to light’. Three quarters of the music is by Chilcott, with three other shorter pieces by Cecilia McDowall, James MacMillan and Francis Pott also reflecting themes of remembrance, redemption and acceptance. With Chilcott himself as producer, these performances are both authoritative and exemplary.

In the two main Chilcott works, Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny’s 40 singers are accompanied by members of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic in a large chamber ensemble. The Canticles of Light (1999) consists of three well-known Latin texts. The second movement, ‘Christe, qui, splendor et dies’, unfurls over a series of extended pedal points from a feeling of melancholic wistfulness to ecstatic warmth.

The substantial five-movement Move him into the sun sets poems by Wilfred Owen and opens full of sunshine. The sparing use of percussion in ‘Spring Offensive’ hints effectively at something militaristic in the distance. Sebastian Mach tackles the achingly long phrases of the tenor solo in ‘Apologia pro Poemate Meo’ with unstrained lyricism. The most extended movement, ‘Futility’, is a slow, searching statement, akin to Finzi’s more morose moments in his Requiem da camera, whereas the final ‘Winter Song’ bursts in with renewed energy. The album concludes with Chilcott’s Sing the Colour of Peace, possibly the most beautiful piece on the programme. Again, Sebastian Mach’s touching interpretation is a highlight.

Pott’s Lament (a setting of a reconciliatory poem by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson) blossoms with his unique, deeply satisfying harmonic thumbprints, underpinned by splendidly sonorous basses. McDowall’s powerful Standing as I do before God takes Edith Cavell’s final words as its starting point. However, for sheer sustained intensity, MacMillan’s searing A Child’s Prayer takes some beating, with its soaring soprano duet lines and wide dynamic and expressive range.