Ice Land combines the old English with the modern Northern European choral tradition ★★★☆☆

Two completely different choral traditions on one album: the ancient English and the contemporary Northern European. The British Choir of Clare College led by Graham Ross sings on Ice Land music by Icelandic composers. From the English throats the clear music sounds tight and clear. The Icelandic choral works are layered but well-arranged and not too surprising, so to a certain extent soothing.

It begins ominously – not representative of the rest of the album – with the menacingly clapping strings of Ad genoa by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (44), a moving 21st century answer to Buxtehudes Membra Jesu Nostrin which the limbs of Jesus (on the cross) are discussed.

Further on, in her setting of an Icelandic confidence psalm, Thorvaldsdóttir allows the low male voices to lay a floor on which the women sing slow lines that dissonantly disperse and then come together harmoniously. Sometimes a half-tone distance rubs, but always, so also in the hopeful Requiem by Sigurdur Saevarsson, comfortingly resolves that consternation.