Moorland Elegies

A recent musical release inspired by Emily Brontë's poetry:

Moorland Elegies
Composed by Tõnu Kõrvits
Release Date: April 2017
Originally recorded in 2017 (Chandos Records)

Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Risto Joost
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Solo Soloist: Jaanika Kilgi

NPR gives more details:

An Estonian Choir Channels Emily Brontë's Windswept Blues
(...)The texts are by Emily Brontë, the English author who, at age 29, published Wuthering Heights. Like her novel, these poems are haunted by shadowy, windswept moors and coiled emotions. Kõrvits' music follows suit.
Brontë's words, of course, propel the stories in these songs — stories of love gone cold and restless moonlit nights. But the strings, closely miked in these agile performances by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, seem to form a character of their own. They can toll like bells or float with gauzy impressionism and, when they swim together with the choir, it can be tough to tell the two apart.
Kõrvits is not afraid to push the singers into unconventional textures. In the song "She Dried Her Tears," Brontë's poem portrays a woman weeping at midnight. In the music, male voices intertwine to conjure her sobbing. It's just the right amount of gothic melodrama.
Whether it's thousands of voices or just two dozen, when they rise together in song something powerful can happen. Like on this album, where the fertile imaginations of a young Estonian composer and a long-gone English author intersect to produce a few moments of magic. (Tom Huizenga)