• After Silence by Voces8 (Voces8 Records), directed by Barnaby Smith, wasn’t devised for the state we are in but might well have been. This wide-ranging double album, marking the vocal ensemble’s 15th birthday, is in four sections: Remembrance, Devotion, Redemption and Elemental. Repertoire spans the centuries, from Byrd, Monteverdi and Bach to Mahler, Britten and Eric Whitacre, with contributions, variously, from soprano Mary Bevan, oboist Nick Deutsch and members of the Academy of Ancient Music.
If you respond to the beauty of perfectly blended unblemished voices, this outstanding collection is for you. If you want rough edges look elsewhere. The album’s theme, borrowing from an essay by Aldous Huxley, who in turn borrowed from Shakespeare, is music’s power to express the inexpressible. Watch Voces8 (1 August) and other top choral groups performing live in HD as part of online festival Live from London (1 August-3 October).
• Here We Are (Delphian) is the debut album from the Hermes Experiment: new commissions, vivid, spirited and highly individual, by nine composers born between 1946 and 1991, writing for the Experiment’s aurally fertile lineup of harp, clarinet, double bass and soprano (the hyper-versatile Héloïse Werner, co-director, who makes every word audible without recourse to texts).
Misha Mullov-Abbado’s The Linden Tree conjures melancholy folk colours; Errollyn Wallen’s Gun gun gun, opening with a splash of harp, quickly reveals itself as a compressed monodrama; Oliver Leith’s Uh huh, Yeah is as languid and laid-back as its title. Freya Waley-Cohen, Joel Rust, Josephine Stephenson, Anna Meredith, Giles Swayne and Emily Hall each contribute distinctive, witty, arresting songs. An imaginative first disc that mirrors our current musical landscape.
• The pianist Llŷr Williams was due to play an eight-concert Beethoven cycle at the Festival de Mayo in Mexico. When it was cancelled he decided to record the full sequence, with professional sound quality, at home in Wales. The recitals are available to stream until 26 July.
