Not surprisingly, the music is quite varied--and uniformly excellent. It's all firmly within the tonal camp, much of it with a decided Britten influence, both in its attention to natural rhythms and inflections of English as well as in the appealing mixture of disjunct melodies and acerbic harmony side-by-side with strikingly conventional structures and colors. Susa's The God of Love my Shepherd Is makes a stunning opener, and the choir shows its impressive mettle--including some very nice octave singing and a superb soprano sound--right from the beginning. The weird and wonderful Ives Psalm 100 provides its own challenges--again handily managed by the choir--and from there we're led on a continuously rewarding journey through rarely heard repertoire, all of which deserves wider attention.

Hovhaness' appropriately short (two minutes) Make Haste is a gem, and Robert Starer's Proverbs for a Son, a multi-layered 16-minute-long work that employs oboe, bass, and guitar, is a masterpiece that fully exploits its text and demands superior ensemble skills from the choir. Likewise Milhaud's concluding section of his Cantata from Proverbs, "A Woman of Valour", which calls for oboe, cello, and harp, and whose craggy harmonies and thorny melodic writing requires world-class singers. The loud, extremely emotive beginning to Philip James' By the Waters of Babylon seems overwrought next to these other works, and indeed this piece will appeal most to listeners who love those late-19th/early-20th century British choral/organ extravaganzas. But even this cannot compete with the program's finale, Bruce Neswick's I will set His Dominion in the Sea, a six-minute tour de force for organ, choir, and two sopranos.

Overall, the singing and instrumental work here is exceptionally fine. This is a very well-trained and rehearsed choir that understands the importance of clarity of articulation, appreciates the meaning of a complete bass-to-treble ensemble balance--and knows how to perfectly execute these techniques. The program is a sheer delight from beginning to end. The only drawback is the sound. The space--The Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, MA--is simply too resonant, too reverberant to capture and properly convey the textural detail of the music--nor does it enable us to fully appreciate the essential, realistic quality of the Gloriae Dei Cantores ensemble. Although special mention is made in the liner notes regarding the venue and its significance--and there's no doubt that this church is a unique and beautiful space (with an especially terrific organ)--it's just not ideal for this kind of music or for the particular demands of a choral recording. Nevertheless, it's one of those sonic situations that the ear soon adjusts to, and fortunately doesn't in any way diminish the value of this program or of the ultimate enjoyment choral music fans will derive from it.