Reviews of CDs
* Worth hearing
** Recommended
*** Essential listening
NETHSINGHA & ST JOHN’S
***
ADVENT LIVE VOLUME 3
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge / James Anderson-Besant, Joseph Wicks, George Herbert (organ) / Oliver Wass (harp) / Andrew Nethsingha ✦ Signum Classics SIGCD768
St John’s College, Cambridge is now firmly associated with recordings of music for the season of Advent. The third in this series of discs contains music that has been featured in their 2020–22 Advent services and is a more contemporary anthology than the two previous ones. Lo! The desert-depths are stirr’d and Telling, by Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Helen Grime respectively, were both commissioned for the choir. Also included are Judith Weir’s familiar Drop down, ye heavens, from above, Ledger’s setting of Rowan Williams’s poem Advent Calendar as well as Adam lay ybounden set by both Ledger and Warlock. There are four organ chorale preludes by J.S. Bach – two from the Orgel-Büchlein plus Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland and Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme. The performances are all top-class and present a wonderful celebration of Advent. The enthralling mix of pieces may provide welcome suggestions for listeners to expand their repertoire for the season.
***
MAGNIFICAT 4
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge / George Herbert (organ) / Alexander Semple (violin) / Andrew Nethsingha ✦ Signum Classics SIGCD777
This is the final recording Andrew Nethsingha made with the St John’s choir before departing for Westminster Abbey, and is a continuation of his series of canticle settings. This disc is a mix of the familiar and some newer additions to the repertoire. Howells’s ‘Collegium Regale’ Te Deum, Stanford’s evening canticles in G and Howells’s in E for tenors and basses, sit alongside some newer settings including Joanna Forbes L’Estrange’s King’s College Service, and the St John’s Services as set by Jonathan Dove and Judith Weir. The disc opens with Anna Semple’s Nunc Dimittis for unaccompanied choir and solo violin. This is a complex work, but it receives a committed, ever-professional performance from the St John’s choir and virtuosic violin playing from Alexander Semple. Overall, the performances are a fitting tribute to the partnership of choir and conductor, and a reminder of the wonderful legacy Nethsingha leaves behind at St John’s.
Ian Munro
BONONCINI FIRST RECORDINGS
**
HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN: CHORAL MUSIC BY GIOVANNI BONONCINI
Choir of Queen’s College, Oxford / Rowan Pierce (soprano) / Esther Lay (mezzo-soprano) / Helen Charlston (alto) / Guy Cutting (tenor) / Giles Underwood (bass) / Academy of Ancient Music / Owen Rees ✦ Signum Classics SIGCD905
For the 12 years he lived in London, Giovanni Bononcini (1670–1747) was equal in public status and reputation with G.F. Handel, with the Tories favouring Handel and the Whig party Bononcini. It seems odd that Bononcini’s name should now be so eclipsed by that of his 15-year-younger rival. All the works on this disc have had to be newly edited from English 18th-century sources. Ave maris stella and Laudate pueri receive their first recordings, as does the main work here, the original D major version of his Te Deum. In this operatic work, the solo voices are to the fore: all of them good, and Helen Charlston outstanding. The disc ends with When Saul was king, a work that Owen Rees speculates may be the first orchestral funeral anthem performed in England. The youthful female and male voices of the Queen’s College choir are joined by the stylish Academy of Ancient Music, the successor in name to Bononcini’s own London ensemble.
Judith Markwith
OTHER CHORAL CDs
***
HENRY ALDRICH: SACRED CHORAL MUSIC II
Oriel College Chapel Choir, Oxford / The Restoration Consort / Alexander Pott (organ) / David Maw ✦ Convivium CR086
This second volume in the much-anticipated series of recordings exploring the music of Henry Aldrich (1648–1710) contains a variety of pieces that either Aldrich arranged or were inspired by other church composers. Three Palestrina-inspired settings clearly show that composer’s influence and popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries. In O God the King of glory (by ‘Henry Aldrich after Palestrina’) in particular, Aldrich displays stylistic, harmonic and contrapuntal features typical of Palestrina’s music. Blessed is the man, as arranged by Aldrich from Orlando Gibbons, is a tour de force for the choir and for the vocal soloists (who are all members of the choir). Aldrich certainly had a good ear, and good knowledge of his contemporaries. While his own pieces can be original, he captures the essence of Tallis, Gibbons and Palestrina excellently. David Maw directs performances with style, urgency and ear for detail; the disc is a wonderful addition to the catalogue.
**
PSALMS, STARS & LIGHT
Charter Choir of Homerton College, Cambridge / Shanna Hart, Lorenzo Bennett (organ) / Daniel Trocmé-Latter ✦ Convivium CR095
This is a wide-ranging disc of psalm settings. It opens with Eric Coates’s Dam Busters March and the text of Psalm 46, ‘God is our strength and refuge’: stirring stuff! From there we move to more familiar settings, including Sumsion’s They that go down to the sea in ships, J.S. Bach’s organ chorale prelude An Wasserflüssen Babylon and Parry’s Laudate Dominum and ‘O praise ye the Lord’. New discoveries include Bobby McFerrin’s The 23rd Psalm and Douglas Coombes’s Psalm 148. While the quality of performance is generally high, Purcell’s O God, thou art my God feels a little rough around the edges. The choir is sensitively and expertly accompanied by Shanna Hart and Lorenzo Bennett, including the former’s harmonization of a plainsong chant for Psalm 8. All in all, this is an attractive recital of an intriguing selection of psalm settings.
***
HARMONIES OF DEVOTION
Contrapunctus / Owen Rees ✦ Signum Classics SIGCD914
This is a marvellously spirited programme of some fine Italian Renaissance music. Monteverdi’s Cantate Domino opens proceedings with vim and vigour (but not at the expense of the music) and leads the way into some beautiful works by Legrenzi, Lotti, Colonna, Steffani and Bernabei. A highlight is the first recording of Legrenzi’s six-voice motet Intret in conspectu tuo. The only reason this piece survived is apparently because Handel took a copy of it with him to London. This substantial work receives a performance with wonderful solos and excellent ensemble singing: a fabulous discovery. Lotti’s Crucifixus settings for 5 and 8 voices receive particularly moving accounts. This disc of Italian motets bubbles and fizzes, thanks to Owen Rees’s interpretations and their sense of urgency. The vocal lines, counterpoint and texture are all clear and a wonderful listen.
***
I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES
Girl Choristers of The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick / Mark Swinton, Colin Millington (organ) / Oliver Hancock ✦ Regent REGCD583
Listeners to BBC Radio 3’s Choral Evensong need little introduction to the choristers of The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick. How wonderful it is to receive a substantial disc of music sung by the girl choristers! This album does not disappoint. Mendelssohn’s ‘I will sing of thy great mercies’ from St Paul and the opening movement of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater dolorosa are hauntingly beautiful as sung here by the girls. The Four short anthems by Paul Bryan are excellent discoveries. The choir excel themselves in the complicated polyphony and harmonies of Sarah MacDonald’s a cappella Miserere mei, Deus. Peter Hurford’s serene Litany to the Holy Spirit, with additional descant by Oliver Hancock, is once again sublime, as is the spirited The Lord is my shepherd by Maurice Greene. This disc shows the 18 girl choristers giving a professional, committed performance and must be a source of pride to Oliver Hancock and all at St Mary, Warwick. This disc is one to treasure.
Ian Munro
BOOKS
FOR THE WARMING OF THE EARTH: MUSIC, FAITH, AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
Mark Porter
SCM Press 208pp.
PB 978-0-334-06568-5 £40.00
Mark Porter describes how musicians and the faith communities they inhabit are responding to climate change and environmental crises. He quotes from over 40 interviews with musicians, songwriters, Christian leaders and activists, to explore how they develop new Christian musical practices. At what will probably be the core of this book for many CMQ readers is a discussion about two musical works and interviews with their creators – firstly a requiem, Cry of the Earth, initiated by Jonathan Arnold (priest and musician) from Adrian Bawtree (composer and organist) and Emma Pennington (canon missioner at Canterbury Cathedral) and secondly a commission from Christian Aid and the Chineke! Foundation. This was for Shirley Thompson (composer and musician) and Roderick Williams (singer and composer) to write a work, Song of the Prophets: a Requiem for the Climate, for performance in St Paul’s Cathedral. An additional description of all of these people should probably be ‘cultural activist’.
Major sections cover Resound Worship’s Doxecology songs on themes of creation, ecology and Christian hope, and Catholic music festivals centred around Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato si’. Adaptations of ‘Now the green blade riseth’ and ‘Jesus Christ the apple tree’ are mentioned in a discussion of the Forest Church movement. The book’s argument can be difficult to follow, with informal references to people and inadequate indexing, but it is well worth persevering through it.
Julian Elloway
Reviews of printed music
E Easy
M Medium
D Difficult
ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS
THE WINTER’S BRIGHTENING [E]
Donna Deam
arr. Joanna Forbes L’Estrange and Alexander L’Estrange
SATB and piano
RSCM RCA453A £3.20
SATB and organ
RSCM RCA453B £3.20
Two-part upper voices and piano
RSCM RCA453C £3.20
Two-part upper voices and organ
RSCM RCA453D £3.20
This was one of the six finalists for the BBC Radio 3 Carol Competition 2022, all of which set Niall Campbell’s festive poem ‘The Winter’s Brightening’. The music aptly captures the feel-good mood of the words, with its command to ‘look here, the winter’s brightening’. The choral writing and accompaniment are most professional. The piece, with its varied scorings, would work with choirs of different sizes, providing there are enough sopranos for some divisi passages. For me, the climax is the quiet third verse (of the four), where the keyboard accompaniment drops out and there is an intensity of feeling in the choir. The brightness of the final verse is all the stronger because of the contrast.
THE SNOW LIES THICK [M]
Ruth Sellar
ST soli, SATB
Goodmusic Publishing GM474 £2.75
Ruth Sellar’s setting of words by the Arts and Crafts artist and poet Selwyn Image won the Sir David Willcocks Carol Competition in 2018 and is now published for the first time. An attractively lilting tune is treated with considerable invention over the six verses with a variety of solos and canonic effects, always inspired by the words that invite us to contemplate ‘this very God, who lays his head so low for our salvation’.
THE JOLLY SHEPHERD [M]
Christopher Maxim
ST soli, SATB and organ
Paraclete Press PPM02176M $5.90
AD CANTUS LETICIE [M/D]
Christopher Maxim
SATB
Paraclete Press PPM02185M $2.90
THE LINDEN TREE CAROL [E/M]
arr. Christopher Maxim
SATB
Paraclete Press PPM02177 $3.10
The jolly shepherd is a seven-minute setting of the anonymous text starting ‘Can I not sing but “Hoy”’. Choral and organ sections alternate joyfully and with shifting metres, punctuated by two reflective, solo-voice sections ‘quasi recitativo’. Musical repetitions make the music comparatively easy to learn, at a time of year when church choir rehearsal time is at a premium – the piece is recommended for a longer contribution to a carol service or concert.
‘Cantus leticie’ translates as ‘song of joy’, to which we are invited by the Christmas text. Appropriately, the four verses, with identical music apart from dynamics, are framed by lively and extensive alleluias. Again, repetition and here also unison writing make this attractive carol easier to learn than it sounds.
The arrangement of The Linden Tree Carol, using its traditional German melody, has some of the tranquil feel of the well-known Reginald Jacques version. However, it uses all seven verses of Woodward’s English translation (while allowing for an optional cut of verses 4 and 5). Variety is achieved by giving the tune to the tenors in verses 3 and 5, and to the sopranos (with ‘ah’s for ATB) in verse 4 and the first part of verse 6.
A GOLDEN STRING [D]
Paul Trepte
Soprano semichorus, SATB and organ
Church Music Society OS52 £3.35
This powerful anthem combines the Advent antiphon ‘O key of David’, sung by SATB choir, with the first verse of Blake’s poem To the Christians, starting ‘I give you the end of a golden string’, sung by a separate soprano semichorus. Both David’s key and the golden string enable us to enter the gate of heaven and have a feeling of movement – appropriate for Advent services. Indeed, the composer suggests that the semichorus (whose initial phrases are semi-aleatoric) should start at a distance from the mixed choir, and process towards it while singing. The choirs meet at a point where the music for singers and organ suddenly takes on an exciting rhythmic drive. This could be a dramatic contribution to an Advent service – with good performers and plenty of rehearsal time!
THERE IS NO ROSE [M]
Robert Sharpe
S solo, SATB
Encore Publications 020775 £2.25
LULLABY, OH, LULLABY! [E]
Esther Bersweden
SATB
Encore Publications 020770 £2.25
O MAGNUM MYSTERIUM [E/M]
Esther Bersweden
SATB
Encore Publications 020771 £2.75
Robert Sharpe’s shapely melody for There is no rose is in two parts, the first more angular and covering a wide range, and the second (on ‘Alleluia’) more lyrical. The melody is repeated for each verse, building from solo, through two-part and SATB, to SATB plus solo soprano (with a top C) for verse 4, before returning to the soprano tune accompanied by humming ATB for the final verse. Its effect derives from the strength of the opening melody, which is distinctive and subtle.
I have written before of a carol of Esther Bersweden’s being ‘warmly lilting’, and here, at the start of Lullaby, oh, lullaby!, is the one-word tempo indication, ‘Lilting’. This gentle, triple-time lullaby, is never louder than mezzo piano. O magnum mysterium is more complex harmonically, and the metre fluctuates, often bar by bar, but there remains a feeling of calm as the voices contemplate the mystery of the incarnation. A brief forte is reached for the name ‘Dominum Jesum Christum’ before a pianissimo ‘Alleluia’ ending – the effect is summed up by the tempo indication for this piece: ‘Ethereal’.
VERBUM PATRIS UMANATUR [M/D]
Andrew Millington
SATB and organ
Encore Publications 020779 £2.95
THE ANGEL AND THE UNICORN [D]
Simon Beattie
SATB with divisions
Encore Publications 020757 £2.95
ADVENT CALENDAR [M/D]
Simon Beattie
SATB with divisions
Encore Publications 020769 £2.75
An energetic organ outburst followed by choral cries of ‘Ey!, ey!’ introduce Andrew Millington’s rumbustious setting of Verbum Patris umanatur (‘The Word of the Father becomes human’). The compound-time melody starts as if it were a medieval dance that remains a constant even in the quieter central verses. The excitement mounts through to the end, with a loud organ solo reed joining in the fun.
Simon Beattie has set his own English translation of the description of the Annunciation in Rilke’s 15-poem cycle on the life of the Virgin Mary. The music starts with a tenor and bass hummed reference to the Basque carol that we know as ‘The angel Gabriel from heaven came’, which becomes an accompaniment to sopranos and altos singing the Rilke text ‘It was not the entrance of the angel, mark you, that startled her.’ We, the listeners, are startled by this juxtaposition, just as Mary was, and, as the poem explains, the angel was: ‘And it startled them both. Then the angel sang his song.’ A solo soprano sings the words ‘Ave Maria’ in conclusion. The musical setting matches the challenge of the words.
Advent Calendar, a setting of the poem by Rowan Williams, starts with voices coming in one by one, as if each were a new door being opened in the calendar. The final description of how ‘the earth writhes to toss him free’ is appropriately tortuous before ‘He will come like child’, and the music settles onto a unison for that final word.
Stephen Patterson
LITURGICAL SETTINGS
MISSA BREVIS SANCTA CECILIA [M]
Sarah MacDonald
SATB and organ
Cathedral Music (RSCM) CM1157 £5.30
The composer explains how she wanted to write a piece that could be rehearsed quickly, and thus with a fair bit of musical repetition. Sopranos also often double tenors at the octave, and altos the same with basses, so in those passages there are only two parts to learn even when there is a four-part effect. The Kyrie is particularly straightforward for the choir, with most of the interest in the organ accompaniment. The Gloria dances joyfully through different metres. Perhaps the most interesting movements are the Sanctus, with its imitation of the pealing of bells (and in the Hosannas concluding the Benedictus), and the Agnus Dei, which has a quiet, almost mystical, intensity before a highly effective increase in texture and volume for ‘dona nobis pacem’.
MISSA PAULINAE [M]
Jeremy Jackman
Upper voices
Encore Publications 020763 £2.75
MISSA VERBUM SUPERNUM [E/M]
Rupert Jeffcoat
Two-part mixed upper and lower voices
Church Music Society OS53 £4.20
Jeremy Jackman’s unaccompanied upper-voice Mass setting is mostly in two parts with a three-part Gloria, a four-part canon depicting the multitude of voices in ‘Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua’, and briefly in five and six parts. The composer helpfully suggests a seating plan at the end of the score. The music is attractive and often consists of short phrases repeated at different pitches, making it easy to learn. Sustained notes under or over other moving parts provide a reference point and help intonation. Some of the chords are complex to pitch, but this is a setting that can be recommended for ambitious upper-voice choirs.
Rupert Jeffcoat’s flexible setting reflects how frequently church choirs find they are sometimes able to offer SATB and sometimes not, and therefore appreciate well-written music that can work with different combinations of voices on different occasions. At its core is a two-part setting for upper and lower voices, but with cue-size notes for some passages in four parts, and other suggestions for optional antiphonal treatments. The opening and closing phrases of the plainchant hymn Verbum supernum provide the openings of the Kyrie, the Gloria, and, in inversion, the Sanctus. Chorus parts are easy to learn – more complex are the rich, added-note chords of the organ part. Also included is a Tantum ergo setting, also for mixed two-part voices, and a possible communion motet alongside the Mass setting.
PRECES, RESPONSES & LORD’S PRAYER SET 1 [M]
PRECES, RESPONSES & LORD’S PRAYER SET 2 [M]
Daniel Cook
Set 1: SATB; Set 2: ATB with divisions
Encore Publications 020752; 020753 £2.75 each
PRECES, RESPONSES & LORD’S PRAYER [M]
Esther Bersweden
SATB
Encore Publications 020766 £2.75
PRECES, RESPONSES & LORD’S PRAYER [M]
Tamsin Jones
SATB
Encore Publications 020758 £2.75
Daniel Cook’s first (SATB) set starts conventionally, indeed might have been written by an eminent Victorian church musician, but then the Lord’s Prayer takes us into a different realm, richly imaginative in harmony and textures, a style that returns during the final Responses and Amens. I am sure that the contrast in idiom is deliberate, and successful. In the second (ATB) set, the Lord’s Prayer becomes a little motet, with basses repeating ‘Our Father’ as a three-note rhythmic figure throughout and altos and tenors providing the words of the prayer. The whole setting is attractive and should join the repertoire for ATB evensong.
Esther Bersweden’s setting is mostly contemplative, which makes the excitement of ‘be praised’, ‘people joyful’ and ‘but only thou, O God’ all the more telling. The Lord’s Prayer is serenely beautiful. Tamsin Jones’s setting, by contrast, is mostly bright and breezy, going with a swing. But then comes the Lord’s Prayer, printed as an appendix at the end, which is a slow, four-part canon at the fifth and octave that just allows the words to be gently prayed. A refreshingly different approach!
James L. Montgomery
ORGAN MUSIC
E Easy
M Medium
D Difficult
MANUALS ONLY
MANUALITER-ALBUM: 16 ORGAN PIECES [M]
Lambert Kleesattel
Dr J Butz BU3027 €15.00
Shades of Schumann hang over some of these character pieces, with titles such as Albumblatt, Kontemplation, Intermezzo, Romanze and Impromptu. But very different are an Eric Coates march-like opening Festliches Präludium and a final Study in Seven that is an acknowledged ‘Homage to Dave Brubeck’. Opening tempo marks often include an indication of mood, but dynamics and registrations are indicated sparingly, making the pieces suitable for instruments of varied sizes. Organists looking for manuals-only pieces that are often unexpectedly different from the norm should explore this collection.
Duncan Watkins
CHRISTMAS ORGAN MUSIC
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE & MYRRH, VOLUME 2 [E/M]
Series editors, Ian Tracey and Keith Harrington
Church Organ World COW-2022-014 £25.00
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE & MYRRH, VOLUME 3 [E/M]
Series editors, Ian Tracey and Keith Harrington
Church Organ World COW-2022-014 £25.00
Despite the title reference to the gifts brought by the Magi, these are volumes of Christmas organ music – apart from a set of Variants on ‘We Three Kings’ by Ian Tracey – and very useful they will be for many church organists over Christmas services. The 25 pieces in volume 2 and the 13 in the slightly slimmer third volume, by a total of 15 different composers, cover many of the most popular Christmas carols or hymns, often in the form of variations or ‘variants’. But there is also Christopher Maxim’s atmospheric Adoration at the Crib, and an arrangement by Tim Harvey of the final chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (‘Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen’) that is rather more difficult than the rest of the pieces, but good to have. With that exception, the mostly undemanding level of difficulty will be welcomed by organists with limited practice time before Christmas but who would still like to widen their repertoire.
GRAND OFFERTOIRE POUR NOËL [M]
Georg Schmitt
ed. Guido Johannes Joerg
Edition Dohr (Universal Edition) 18969 £10.95
Georg Schmitt (1821–1900) was born in the Prussian city of Trier but spent most of his life in Paris, including as titulaire at Saint-Sulpice, which appointment was preceded by an interlude as organist of the cathedral in New Orleans. His Christmas Grand Offertoire is a nine-minute, mostly joyful romp through at least three carol melodies: Adeste fideles, Noël suisse (‘Il est un petit l’ange’) and Noël des bourgeois de Châtres. Adeste fideles will at least be recognized by everyone and is introduced in a more restrained central section. At times the treatments feel as if they are anticipating Schmitt’s successor at Saint-Sulpice, Louis Lefébure-Wély.
Duncan Watkins
VOLUNTARIES
THIRTY SHORT CHORALE PRELUDES ON THE MOST COMMON CHORALES [E/M]
Max Reger ed. Alexander Becker
Carus-Verlag 52.877 €26.95
Max Reger (1873–1916) wrote to his publisher that he intended his collection of chorale preludes, eventually published as Op. 135a, to be ‘as simple and easy as possible, so that every country organist can play them … they are the most common chorales’. Individual pieces from this collection often find their way into seasonal and other anthologies. They are certainly short and mostly quite easy, and fortunately many of the ‘most common’ chorale melodies are still widely known by organists and congregations. This offprint from the complete Reger edition benefits from the rediscovery in 2019 of the previously lost manuscript used for the original engraving.
RHAPSODY [D]
Gordon Lawson
Banks Music Publications 14122 £4.95
This is a piece on a scale with Herbert Howells’s three Rhapsodies and sharing some features of his tonal/modal language. Changes of mood, changes of key (whether notated by key signature or accidentals), changes of tempo – there is much fluctuation, and a beautiful ‘meno mosso, espressivo’ section. Overall, however, the musical journey is resolute and purposeful, based around B minor, but finally arriving, as if out of a dark storm, on a triumphant B major.
RECESSIONAL [M]
Christopher Maxim
Paraclete Press PPM02314M $11.25
Organists who enjoy playing William Mathias’s Recessional or Processional, or indeed Christopher Maxim’s own Processional recommended long ago in these pages by Trevor Webb, will enjoy this well-crafted, tuneful and happy piece. Played at the suggested metronome mark, it is not fast and lies well under the hands and feet. If used at the end of a service, it will dismiss the congregation in a high-spirited frame of mind.
INTRODUCTION, VARIATIONS ET FINAL SUR LE ‘STABAT MATER’ [M]
Jean-Marie Plum
ed. Otto Depenheuer
Edition Dohr (Universal Edition) 20521 £8.50
It is several years since David Patrick produced his collection of six pieces by Jean-Marie Plum (1899–1944), which included the striking ‘Toccata on Big Ben’ (now available through Banks Music Publications). Here is a more serious work, reflecting the composer’s career as priest and musician, and in particular his desire to combine plainsong with a Romantic musical language. The standard plainsong tune (sometimes sung in English to ‘At the cross her station keeping’) is presented at the start and is heard clearly through four contrasting variations before a rather grand finale.
Duncan Watkins
