This album, perhaps more than any other, brought Eric Whitacre’s choral music to a wide audience. It certainly set benchmark standards for performances of the American composer’s close harmonies with Polyphony’s immaculate intonation and attention to every detail of expression and dynamic shading. One can sense the eyes of Stephen Layton’s choristers trained on his hand gestures and their hearts engaged with the resonant poetic texts and imagery each work conveys. Here are sonorous and tonally warm readings of such Whitacre standards as Sleep and Lux aurumque, as well as an impassioned account of Cloudburst. Choir and conductor connect at the most profound human level with the heartrending emotions of When David Heard, a searing reflection of a father’s grief at the loss of his son—and a modern masterwork.