Could this be the year when contemporary choral composers such as Alex Freeman, Helena Tulve and Matthew Whittall finally emerge from the shadows of better-known figures such as Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre? Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1972, Freeman’s musical studies (like Whittall’s) took him to Finland, and while it would be misleading to read too much into the cultural and geographical relocation, imbibing the country’s musical past and present – in particular Finland’s rich choral traditions – has clearly shaped Freeman’s musical aesthetic.

Clarity of thought, purpose and gesture allied with a broad-brushstroke directness are recurring features, which often reveal hidden depths. Like Sibelius and Rautavaara, Freeman’s music can be appreciated on multiple levels. Another quality is that his music covers a wide stylistic compass without ever sounding obviously polystylistic. Gregorian or Russian Orthodox chants appear cheek by jowl with pop-song lines and patterns; medieval turns of phrase or Renaissance-style polyphonic textures rub against stacked tonal clusters or more dissonant harmonic configurations. Freeman’s skill lies in his ability to make such transitions sound natural, indeed almost inevitable.

This tapestry-like stylistic approach is taken a step further in his Requiem, Under the Arching Heavens. Completed in 2018, the work was written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the civil war in Finland in 1918. Freeman cleverly weaves Finnish and English texts by Aleksis Kivi, Edith Södergran, Viljo Kajava, Siegfried Sassoon and Walt Whitman around the original Latin words. The Finnish poems in particular prompt the music to take on a more searching quality. In Freeman’s setting of Kivi’s ‘Sydämeni laulu’ (‘Song of my heart’), shifting choral colours eventually settle on a gently rocking harmonic pattern, while the impression one gains from listening to ‘Fientliga stjärnor’ (‘Hostile stars’) is of a prolonged crescendo stretched out across its five-minute timespan. During these moments one senses that Freeman is guided by the general spirit of the words rather than getting bogged down in specifics. In the Latin settings, Freeman at times appears to work harder to get his message across.

Given its subject matter, the Requiem’s mood is on the whole darker and more disquieting than other choral works by Freeman, such as the lively and invigorating Cathedrals of Spring, which recently appeared on Somnium Ensemble’s impressive ‘Unesi ääni’ (Pro Audile, 2019). The latter’s mood is more vividly captured here in Freeman’s vivid setting of Shakespeare texts, A Wilderness of Sea, performed with real poise, power and purpose by the Helsinki Chamber Choir under Nils Schweckendiek.