‘The Voice of the Beloved‘ with Netherlands Radio Choir and Benjamin Goodson is due for release in October 2025 on PENTATONE.
A powerful collection of 20th-century sacred choral works by Frank Martin, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, and Olivier Messiaen, at its heart is Martin’s Mass for Double Choir, a deeply personal expression of faith composed in 1922 and kept private for decades. Its austere beauty and luminous harmonies make it one of the most moving sacred works of the last century. Daniel-Lesur’s Le Cantique des cantiques transforms the Song of Songs into a sensual and spiritual choral tapestry, weaving up to twelve voices into a radiant soundscape. Messiaen’s O sacrum convivium, a brief but transcendent motet, completes the program with shimmering reverence.
“The cover art, Marc Chagall’s stained-glass window in Tudeley, reflects a spirit of dialogue: a Jewish artist working in a Christian context, responding visually to themes that, like Daniel-Lesur’s Le Cantique des Cantiques, draw from the Hebrew Bible and are steeped in Christian mysticism. Daniel-Lesur sets texts from the Song of Songs, an ancient poem that invites us to understand faith through the body and erotic love. In the original Jewish tradition the text is often read allegorically, as a depiction of the love between God and Israel. Later Christian interpretations reimagine it as the love between Christ and the Church. Recording Le Cantique with the Netherlands Radio Choir offers the chance for great textural variety. Some movements we have recorded with solo voices to create a sense of individual connection and intimacy.
Each of these works opens a different portal to the sacred: through awe, through longing, through patience. They remind us that religious experience is not always about answers, but about being present to mystery in all its forms.”
Benjamin Goodson
Following their acclaimed 2023 release Rheinberger & Mendelssohn: Choral Works, the choir returns with a recording that reveals the sacred not only in worship, but in the raw, expressive power of the human voice.
DIGITAL RELEASE DATE: 10th October 2025
PHYSICAL RELEASE DATE: October 2025
