[Music of Remembrance] commissioned Lori Laitman, one of the most gifted vocal music composers before the public today, to compose an oratorio which would memorialize the magazine and the boys who created it. David Mason, a past collaborator with Laitman, constructed a libretto combining the story of the boys with six of the poems which were written for their magazine. The result is profoundly moving masterpiece of heartbreak and hope, and the finest work yet to emerge from Laitman’s prolific pen… One of the most important things that must be said about this work is that it is by no means relentlessly bleak and sorrowful. Laitman’s score is a skillful mixture of darkness and light, death and life, as is Mason’s beautifully crafted libretto…Who would have guessed that a group of imprisoned boys from more than sixty years ago would have something so compelling to say to us about the importance of the arts in our lives? The words themselves are powerful enough, but when wed to Laitman’s eloquent music they penetrate our being even more deeply and permanently… Soloists Ross Hauck and Angela Niederloh sing powerfully and expressively, with careful enunciation of these beautiful texts they are privileged to sing. The Northwest Boychoir delivers a gorgeous, heartfelt performance and is especially impressive in how they manage Laitman’s delicately balanced and complex harmonies… Brief mention must be made of the other Laitman work on this disk, Fathers, which she composed back in 2002 and revised in 2010. This song cycle is no afterthought; it is an exquisitely crafted masterwork in its own right.
