Guy Suavé has reviewed Ensemble Altera's 2024 disc, Dazzling Light, featuring Evening Prayer.
What particularly captivated me on this album were the works by composers born after the 1960s. Joanna Marsh's (born 1970) Evening Prayer (2019) is characterized by various contrapuntal devices that, theoretically, could be disturbing: cross-chromaticisms, superpositions of bitonal chords (E major above D major), frictions of minor seconds. But she masters this sonic alchemy so well with successions of other firmly consonant chords that I was seduced by the atmosphere, both mystical and soothing.
Read the full review here.
