Heaven and Earth

Infodad Review

Heaven and Earth

the smooth and assured delivery of Cappella Romana keeps the work meaningful and communicative throughout… Ikon of Light is majestic, generally slow-paced, pervaded by a contagious sense of calm that creates an experience of time expansion…

“Cappella Romana… combines the world première recording of Heaven and Earth: A Song of Creation with a piece that has been made available in recorded form before, Ikon of Light by Sir John Tavener (1944-2013).… Although the composers’ treatment of the textual material differs – there are, for example, notable stylistic differences between “He Waters the Mountains” (Khalil) and the following “He Made the Moon” (Sander) – the use of the same underlying text provides a measure of unity to the piece, and the smooth and assured delivery of Cappella Romana keeps the work meaningful and communicative throughout.… Tavener’s piece for choir and string trio, in which the interweaving and contrasting sounds of the voices and the instruments played by 45th Parallel Universe are consistently involving and often fascinating. Ikon of Light is majestic, generally slow-paced, pervaded by a contagious sense of calm that creates an experience of time expansion, in which the work seems to grow beyond its 44-minutes duration.… The presentation of Ikon of Light is thoroughly impressive, and if this work’s excellence of creation and performance makes it more likely that listeners, even a subset of listeners, will become interested in the never-before-recorded Heaven and Earth, so much the better for all this music.”

–Mark J. Estren