Pärt: My Heart's in the Highlands

“it's the "Stabat Mater" which impresses most, a sublime concord of voices and strings in Pärt's characteristic tintinnabulate flotation.” The Independent, 30th March 2012 *****

“It is no surprise that the virtuosic singers in Theatre of Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen are often to be found in early music ensembles...The NYYD Quartet and organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent add sonic variety to this pure, minimalist enterprise.” The Observer, 8th April 201

“Hillier and his colleagues are fully at ease with the slowness of undertow and sense of near-repose that the unfolding self-similarity creates in so many of the pieces here. And they rightly often glory in the glowing resonances they’re presented with. The patient, softly-contoured gentleness they bring to the start of The Deer’s Cry is mesmerising and makes the stresses of its later insistence – climax seems too strong a word – all the more effective.” Irish Times, 20th April 2012 *****

“Theatre of Voices have lived and breathed Part's music for over two decades but it is perhaps the warmth and beauty of the voices of Ars Nova Copenhagen that is most immediately striking here” Gramophone Magazine, June 2012

“There's little of the balletic brilliance that Pärt displayed in such works as the Stabat Mater or Tabula Rasa, and mercifully as little of the thunderous severity of his Passio mode. Instead there's a quiet and cumulative power to these works, given performances of luminous purity by Polyphony and Stephen Layton.” Matthew Shorter, bbc.co.uk, 1st September 2003

“The choir’s pursuit of perfection ideally complements the sheer beauty of the music” Classic FM Magazine

“A triumph … sublime, ethereal beauty” Gramophone Magazine

“The singing on this disc is little short of stunning” The Telegraph

“Laudibus and Mike Brewer are particularly good at creating vocal effects, meaning this programme is tailor-made for them. Their rich lower body of voices and silvery sopranos combine beautifully in So Deep, the rippling of Trout Loch is perfectly done, and they've had a good crack at the breathless excitement of Ceilidh” Charlotte Gardner, bbc.co.uk, 24th August 2009

“Meurig Bowen's notes observe that choral pieces composed in the 1990s suggested Pärt was moving into 'more complex, exotic harmonic territory'.
Some of his music began to give a glimpse of what was described as 'an attractively post- Minimalist aspect' of the composer's recent work.
All rather premature, perhaps, since, as Bowen acknowledges, Pärt subsequently returned to a more strictly diatonic, triadic approach.
Even so, the staccato, carol-like episodes bracketing Dopo La Vittoria, commissioned in 1991 and delivered in 1997, come as a shock, but the bulk of the piece is more recognisably by Pärt, and the Nunc dimittis, with its lovely, lambent solo part for soprano Elin Thomas, evoking Allegri's Miserere, assuages all doubts.
The idea of Pärt setting Burns might surprise, but My heart's in the Highlands, with its serene, Pachelbel-like organ line and pellucid vocal by countertenor David James, is a triumph. In the hymn-like Littlemore Tractus and Salve Regina, warm melodies and bursts of colourful chords mellow Pärt's sound without detracting from its sublime, ethereal beauty. Polyphony's performance is gorgeous.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010