Alex Freeman is an American composer, born in North Carolina in 1972, who developed a love for Finland while researching his doctoral thesis on the first movement of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony. What began as a visit turned into residence, and since 2001 he has lived in Finland. Freeman has been praised as a composer of great versatility, one who can skillfully weave together music reflective of ancient chants, folk idioms, and pop music styles. He also has been influenced by the rich choral tradition of his adopted country. That tradition infuses Under the Arching Heavens: A Requiem, which at 66:20 is the major work on the program. It was commissioned by the Helsinki Chamber Choir in 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of Finland’s civil war in 1918. Freeman was inspired to write a work that is quite dark in mood. He mixes the words of the traditional Latin Requiem Mass with texts by a variety of poets, beginning with “Sydämeni laulu” (A Song of My Heart) by Aleksis Kivi, and including poets as varied as Viljo Kajava, Siegfried Sassoon, and Walt Whitman, among others. Freeman’s setting of each text is responsive to mood and atmosphere, communicating the poet’s reaction to the horrors of war and our inability as humans to avoid it. The music for “Song of My Heart” is filled with hushed beauty as Kivi speaks of taking a child to “Tuoni’s grove, the coppice of peace, far from hatred and struggle, far from the treacherous world.” The setting of Edith Södergram’s “Hostile Stars” is where the music veers most strongly away from any sense of peace and acceptance—dissonance and volume build to a shattering climax. Despite music that is almost unvaryingly slow, Freeman draws the listener into his world through the urgent intensity of his vision. His harmonic language is largely though not exclusively tonal, and he has a good sense of how to build tension and then provide release. The last movement, “O Years and Graves!” is the longest of the work’s eleven. It begins with a quiet “Dona nobis pacem,” progressing to an adaptation of Whitman’s poem, “Pensive on her Dead Gazing.” Freeman’s setting makes for a deeply moving conclusion, managing to be both consoling and disturbing at the same time. Under the Aching Heavens comes full circle by ending with the final line of its opening movement, “A Song of My Heart.” A Wilderness of Sea sets passages from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, A Comedy of Errors, and Sonnet No. 64. All deal in some way with the power of the seas. They provide Freeman an opportunity to display an expanded range of styles, including a brilliant section that borders on choral Sprechtstimme demonstrating great rhythmic imagination from the composer and incisive skill from the Helsinki Chamber Choir. Both performances are superb, and BIS’s usual warm, clear recorded sound is another asset. Freeman’s program notes are very informative, and BIS deserves praise for supplying full texts and translations. This release turned out to be a lovely discovery for me.