Renewal

Arrangements can give music fresh and powerful new leases of life as familiar sounds are made new. In this captivating collection, choral and chamber works are transformed for string orchestra. Those chosen here reflect on the pain of the pandemic, while also offering hope and solace. Joanne Marsh’s atmospheric choral work “In Winter’s House” emerges rich, spacious and comforting. In contrast, Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte” blends classical refinement with dizzying dissonance to create an unsettling atmosphere. Three songs by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, beautifully sung by Ruby Hughes, strike mournful, tragic notes, while the turmoil and longing in Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor is heightened in its new orchestral guise. Renewal finishes with hope for the months ahead, a setting by Shaw of Psalm 84: “The sparrow found a house and the swallow her nest, where she may place her young.”