John Cage, Latvian Radio Choir, Sigvards Kļava

John Cage wrote very little for choir, and this Ondine disc by the Latvian Radio Choir under Sigvards Kļava gathers what there is, together with two late number pieces not written specifically for choir. Hymns and Variations of 1979 and Four² of 1990 are the two surviving works Cage wrote specifically for chorus. Five of 1988 and Four⁶ of 1992 are taken up by the singers here. The record won the choral category of the Gramophone Classical Music Awards in 2023, and the same year it was among the nominees for the BBC Music Magazine Choral Award.

The recordings were made in Riga, at St John's Church and at Sig.Ma Studio, between 2007 and 2020, with Agnese Strelča as engineer, Enno Mäemets mixing and mastering, and booklet notes by James Pritchett. Kļava has led the choir, founded in 1940, since 1992. Hymns and Variations starts from two four-part pieces by William Billings, Old North and Heath, from his New England Psalm Singer of 1770, and draws five variations from each; here it runs to about 24 minutes over twelve tracks. In Five each of the five parts has a fixed range of pitches, sung within time brackets. Four² was meant for school singers. Four⁶, at about thirty minutes the longest work, asks the performers to choose twelve sounds and sustain them, and the overlaps make the texture. In MusicWeb International (2023) Mark Sealey compared the effect to the solo piano music of Morton Feldman. BBC Music Magazine (2022) praised "the fearless skill of Sigvards Kļava's choir as they navigate the most jagged, fragmented notes and pitches".

Ondine CD ODE 1402-2, released in 2022, with a playing time of about 66 minutes.