REVIEWS
CDs and BOOKS
CDs
*Worth hearing
**Recommended
***Essential listening
CHORAL CDs
***
FINZI
Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge / Trinity Brass / Alexander Hamilton and Asher Oliver (organ) / Stephen Layton · Hyperion CDA68222
Lo, the full, final sacrifice is the big work that concludes this CD: a ‘Festival Anthem’ commissioned from Gerald Finzi (1901–56) by Walter Hussey (see CMQ, March 2018) for St Matthew, Northampton in 1946, three years after he commissioned Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb – in both cases for the church’s patronal festival. From the organ introduction (Alexander Hamilton, one of the two excellent organ scholars) through to the final Amen, this large-scale depiction of the mystery of the Eucharist receives a stunning performance. ‘Visionary’ is an adjective often used for Finzi’s music, and the Layton and his 39 mixed-voice singers give a performance that vividly captures its intense emotional world.
The disk opens with a Magnificat written six years later for Vespers and without a Gloria or accompanying Nunc Dimittis for Anglican use – but this CD later includes a Nunc Dimittis by David Bednall, described as a homage to Finzi and, to my ears, a worthy companion to the Magnificat. Also on the CD are the three short anthems My lovely one, God is gone up (with brass and organ) and Welcome sweet and sacred feast, plus secular part-songs.
Julian Elloway
**
CLIVE OSGOOD’S SACRED CHORAL MUSIC
Excelsis / Rebecca Moon (Soprano) / London Mozart Players / Robert Lewis · Convivium CR049
Osgood writes attractive, approachable music that is particularly effective in the slower, more atmospheric movements, but also with Latin-American or jazz influences in livelier pieces that sometimes seem to dance through the texts. The example of earlier composers is evoked in a six-movement Dixit Dominus, a Miserere mei (including solo soprano top C) and an Ave verum corpus that the composer (perhaps rashly) describes as modelled on Mozart.
A single-movement Beatus Vir begins and ends quietly and shows how Osgood has a Karl-Jenkins-like ability to write music that approaches the boundary of sentimentality without actually crossing it. But for me the most enjoyable pieces are the shorter, simpler setting of English texts such as Rejoice in the Lord alway, Lord, for thy tender mercy’s sake, Come, my way, my truth, my life and above all a catchy setting of Heber’s hymn Brightest and best with lovely singing from Rebecca Moon. The composer is well served throughout by the performers and the recording.
Judith Markwith
ORGAN CDs
**
FROM PALACES TO PLEASURE GARDENS
Thomas Trotter plays the 1735 Richard Bridge organ of Christ Church, Spitalfields · Regent Records REGCD526
Many organ-playing readers of CMQ will be familiar with the manuals-only voluntaries of Hook, Stanley and Russell, played on a variety of instruments, some more and some less suitable for the music. Here they are played on the Spitalfields organ, restored to its 1735 specification and tuned to sound as near as one can imagine being heard at the time that much of this music was written. At the centre of the CD recital is Pepusch’s 18-minute Voluntary in C major, whose 12 movements provide a tour of the tone-colours available on 18th-century English organs – all available at Spitalfields and demonstrated by Trotter with deft phrasing and sparkling passagework. Other pieces included are a Corelli Concerto Grosso and concertos by Handel and J.C. Bach in solo organ versions that are either contemporary or by Trotter himself.
*
INVOCATIONS: ORGAN MUSIC BY HUW MORGAN
David Pipe plays the organ of Bridlington Priory Chapel · Meridian CDE 84653
While single-composer organ CDs (with a few obvious exceptions) may appeal to a limited market, this one is an enjoyable listen in its entirety thanks to the breadth and variety of Huw Morgan’s compositions, the deservedly praised organ at Bridlington Priory and the playing of David Pipe. All the pieces were written since 2006 and include recital works such as Invocation and Dance and a four-movement Partita Borealis along with short liturgical pieces including six hymn preludes and a piece called Living Stones (a fantasia on Urbs beata). The composer writes that ‘while my inspirations are wide and varied – plainsong, William Mathias, Bartok, modernism, ancient rituals and the drama of mysterious landscapes – I have tried to create a body of work that is idiomatic, colourful, practical and useful to both liturgical organists and recitalists.’ There is often a feeling of the ‘mysterious landscapes’, with ancient forces evoked through swirls of sound. It is fascinating music.
Judith Markwith
**
TRANSFORMATIONS: A SELECTION FOR ORGAN
Alexander Ffinch plays the organ of Cheltenham College Chapel · Divine Art dda25193
This is an important recording in several ways. It is the first recording of Cheltenham’s Norman and Beard instrument since its latest 2017 Harrison and Harrison restoration. The CD contains three major works, one from each of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries – superbly played and recorded. First up is Jongen’s Sonata eroica of 1930, little known to non-organists but here receiving a persuasive performance that might endear it to those hearing it for the first time. The heroic introduction knocks one back (thanks to instrument and player, and to the dynamic range of the recording) before a series of very varied variations, a fugue and a triumphant conclusion. Written for the inaugural concert of a new hall and organ in Brussels, the piece serves well to introduce the newly restored instrument in Cheltenham.
Jonathan Dove’s The Dancing Pipes was written in 2014 for St Laurence, Ludlow and the 250th anniversary of an organ that still has most of a 1764 Snetzler at its heart. The music dances, the pipes dance, and the organist’s hands and feet dance as what the composer describes as ‘a little dancing figure’ is put through all sorts of transformations and contrapuntal inventions with many colourful changes in the registration. The CD concludes with Liszt’s mighty Fantasia and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’, played with attention to detail and opportunities for ‘orchestral’ colour changes, but also with drive and panache.
Julian Elloway
BOOKS
TIMOTHY DUDLEY-SMITH
LIGHT ON THE WAY: 45 CONTEMPORARY HYMNS BASED ON PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE
Timothy Dudley-Smith
RSCM: 104pp. P/B 978-0-85402-289-2 £9.95
A HOUSE OF PRAISE PART THREE: COLLECTED HYMNS 2013–2018
Timothy Dudley-Smith
Oxford University Press and Hope Publishing Company: 211pp. P/B 978-0-19-352952-6 £22.95
These two books will come as no surprise to collectors of Timothy Dudley-Smith’s publications over the years, but each contains distinctive new features. Light on the Way selects 45 hymns that the author has written over 50 years or so and presents them in a handsome, generously produced volume, with music selected by William Llewellyn. Although all are based on Scripture, there are only six based on psalms, but there has already been published A Mirror to the Soul in this series comprising entirely such hymns. Similarly, Christmas hymns are omitted, covered by the earlier Beneath a Travelling Star volume. The music includes many well-known tunes that will be useful in introducing the texts to congregations for the first time. But also to be welcomed is the inclusion of little-known tunes, or ones only familiar in one particular tradition – often printed along with a more widely known alternative.
The collected hymn texts of Timothy Dudley-Smith were initially published in 2003 as A House of Praise without being called ‘Part 1’ because (rather like the initial publication of Carols for Choirs) no further volume was envisaged. Yet now, 16 years later, we can give thanks for Part 3, and hymns numbered 436 to 518. There are two sections that appear for the first time. The first contains four ‘Scripture Sequences’ each comprising three or four hymns from the same psalm or chapter of the bible. The second is ‘One Big Family: songs for all-age worship’, taken from the music and words collaboration with William Llewellyn that was published by the RSCM as One Big Family.
There is a feeling of tying together a life’s work in these two books. It is appropriate that the author should explicitly return to the scripture that has underpinned his output – and appropriate in particular that, in his words, ‘many of these texts carry a reminder … that the Christian world-view, informed by Scripture, moves steadily towards that “happy ending” which God has prepared for those who love him.’
Julian Elloway