It appears to be amarcord’s “personal Mass” for the ensemble’s 25th anniversary and “our most serious reflection upon the world,” so tenor Wolfram Lattke. On the new album “Tenebrae,” the two-time prizewinners of the Echo-Klassik Prize look at the expanses of their repertoire and repeatedly captivate with their distinctive sound and breathtaking homogeneity. amarcord succeeds in forging an arch fraught with tension from early monody and polyphony through Renaissance polyphony by grandmasters such as Johannes Ockeghem and Thomas Tallis to contemporary pieces written expressly for the ensemble by Sydney Boquiren, Ivan Moody, and Leipzig composer Marcus Ludwig. Shadow and light, sorrow and joy, despair and hope lie close together, yet between them is hidden a certain unrest, combined with strong emotions, which is captured by the music on this album. Even if the album, with the eponymous Celan poem “Tenebrae” in a setting by Marcus Ludwig, leaves the listener with unanswered questions – the members of amaracord have found the unifying elements, the harmony in collective music-making and performing, allowing them to coalesce into one of the world’s best vocal ensembles. © Raumklang/harmonia mundi