In “heavenly beautiful tones”, the Kammerchor Saarbrücken, under the direction of Georg Grün, offers a performance of rarely heard a cappella Passion music by Wolfgang Rihm, Paweł Łukaszewski and Theo Brandmüller. The contemporary works are based on texts for both Passion and requiem music that draw the listener into diverse sonic worlds through their tonal colors and beauty.

Like a modern stained glass window in a gothic church, Rihm’s Sieben Passionstexte (“Seven Passion Texts”) – rarities of the a cappella repertoire – skillfully span a musical bridge from the present day to classical vocal polyphony. In contrast, Łukaszewski embraces Holy Week in his expansive Responsoria Tenebrae through select biblical quotations. And in Brandmüller’s Le Paradis, the listener is able to appreciate how the Kammerchor Saarbrücken masters the demands of an extremely complex and demanding work. Completed by the choir’s director Georg Grün, this opus ultimum concludes the recording with the conciliatory encounter with death, so to speak, in “heavenly beautiful tones”.