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Modern ears are at the mercy of sounds from all quarters; rarely comforting, often intolerable. The case becomes all too clear when listening to Tavener’s music, especially his recent works for choir, which call for sustained contemplation and personal reflection. As such, the composer has turned his art to the service of matters spiritual, reaching even those who would deny the need for religion in their lives. The power of Tavener at his best is fully unlocked by Polyphony and Stephen Layton, whose sensitivity to the sacred and human in his music communicates in every work on this disc.

Of the six world premiere recordings presented here, two stand out as exceptional in terms of their sheer transcendent beauty. Butterfly Dreams and Schuon Hymnen, both completed last year, unfold new ‘universalist’ ideas in Tavener’s spiritual development. They also create a meditative atmosphere in sound that illuminates the mystical imagery of Tavener’s chosen texts, encouraged and intensified by Layton and his flawless singers. Elsewhere, in The Second Coming, for example, the corporate sympathy for music that rewards and never vexes performers of this calibre adds to the intensity of the listening experience. Unmissable.

Andrew Stewart

Best Buy *****

Stephen Layton's superb choir, Polyphony, does wonders in bringing variety to a sequence of John Tavener's recent works for small chorus that might easily have seemed too slow and meditative.  Layton magnetically sustains Tavener's repetitious writing, even in the longest and least varied piece, Shunya, with that Sanskrit word for "void" endlessly repeated over Tibetan gong-beats.  

Most impressive of the longer works is Schuon Hymnen, setting German words by the Sufi sheikh Frithjof Schuon, with verses and refrains bringing sharp contrasts between powerful unisons and distant choral comment, punctuated by mantra-like phrases for solo tenor.  Birthday Sleep, setting a Vernon Watkins poem, brings attractively scrunching harmonies, and Butterfly Dreams delightfully captures the insect's fluttering.

[…] Layton and his singers achieve true ecstatic intensity. The usual Hyperion recording team of Mark Brown and Julian Millard captures excellently the acoustics of The Temple Church in London , where Layton is Director of Music.  

[…] For the Tavener devotee, among whose number I include myself, this disc is an essential survey of the composer’s recent musical concerns, and contains some splendid new music.

[…]There’s no doubt about the quality of the performances. Tavener finds devoted interpreters in Polyphony who produce some of the most beautiful choral singing you could ever hope to hear. And all is captured in a glowing recording.  

Anthony Burton

Peace, calm, the eternal, the spiritual: Tavener’s music offers balm to listeners harried by the pressures of the modern world. Nowhere does his focus on simplicity come across better than in his smaller choral works. This disc brings together a collection of the most recent: Butterfly Dreams with its fleeting images, the radiant Schuon Hymnen and the hypnotic Shûnya. In Polyphony’s flawless performances, the music aspires to beauty incarnate.  

Stephen Layton, and his choral group Polyphony, have excelled themselves this time.

[…]The sheer sound of this CD is ravishing, as is the voice of Soprano Amy Haworth soaring above the choir as a representation of the Virgin Mary clad in golden sunlight. That texture seems to be hinting at a new harmonic departure for Tavener, and it's just one of many spine-tinglingly wonderful moments on this CD. Indeed, it's difficult for me to praise this CD highly enough […].

Stephen Layton directs with clarity and sensitivity. In fact his expert pacing is the main reason for this recording's success. This is one of Layton's best CDs yet, and that's saying something.

[…] The recorded sound is exemplary, using to full effect the supportive acoustics of the Temple Church, where Stephen Layton is Director of Music. And this disc has done much to convince me of Tavener's powers of invention as a composer. Clearly all of his recent music fits into a certain stylistic category - spiritual minimalism, they call it. But within that box there's a wide, expressive palette. As ever, it helps to follow the words if you really want to get inside the music. But with singing of this quality, it's also quite easy just to be seduced by the sumptuous sound of these beautifully controlled voices.