Hard on the heels of two orchestral pieces performed by the Estonian Festival Orchestra (Alpha, 9/22) – the first review of Ülo Krigul’s music in these pages – comes this album of four recent choral works. Three of the works were written in 2019-20, when Krigul was the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir’s composer-in-residence. Their marvellously tailored performances, recorded in Tallinn’s Methodist Church, have been captured by BIS in stunningly extraordinary sound. Listen, for instance, to the opening 90 seconds of Vesi ise (‘Water Is’, 2015), scored for chorus and an electronic ‘soundscape’ sampled from gongs. The opening is inaudible at standard volume settings unless wearing headphones, and even then could be mistaken for the distant rumble of traffic. It develops into a sensitively restrained motet setting Ilmar Laaban’s wonderfully susurrating text – actually added after the music had been set down.

Water, again, dominates And the Sea Arose, the only work to use string-orchestral accompaniment (provided by the superb Tallinn Chamber Orchestra) and the most volatile, evoking St Peter’s failure to emulate Christ’s walking on the water. Hedi Rosma provided the text and, compiled from writings by Uku Masing, also for Aga vaata aina üles (‘But Always Look Up’), where air is the element. Aga vaata is the finest work here, its long lines growing from the wordless opening ‘Hingamisi’ (‘Breathings’) to the extended finale, ‘Kui vanasti räägiti tuulest’ (‘Once, when we spoke about the wind’). Krigul’s compositional skill is taxed to the full through the marriage of organic growth and expressive subtlety. Finally, liquid turns (2020) draws the threads together, reusing verbal and musical quotes from both works (it has no specific text of its own), the form determined by field recordings of a frozen river and thawing ice. However contrived or artificial that might sound, the result is poetic and magical, especially when sung with such quietly compelling radiance as here.