EDWARD
S AC R E D C H O R A L M U S I C
NESBIT
Th e C h o i r o f K i n g ’s C o l l e g e L o n d o n
Ruby Hughes soprano Joshua Simões organ
J o s e p h Fo r t d i r e c t o r
EDWARD NESBIT
Mass
SACRED CHORAL MUSIC THE CHOIR OF KING’S COLLEGE LONDON Joseph Fort director Ruby Hughes soprano Joshua Simões organ
1
I. Kyrie [2:47]
2
II. Gloria [7:02]
3
III. Sanctus [4:53]
4
IV. Benedictus [7:55]
5
V. Interlude [3:54]
6
VI. Agnus Dei [2:40]
Evening Psalms
The Choir of King’s College London gratefully acknowledges the support of the individuals and institutions who made this project possible. The performance and recording were funded by grants from the Fenton Arts Trust, RVW Trust, and King’s College London. Thanks to the clergy and staff of the Dutch Church, London who graciously allowed the use of their church for the recording, and to the staff of the Dean’s Office of King’s College London (Ellen ClarkKing, Tim Ditchfield, Clare Dowding and Natalie Frangos) for providing considerable administrative and logistical support. Recorded on 7-9 June 2021 in the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, London Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: James Waterhouse 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover image: Artem Sapegin via Unsplash Session photography: foxbrushfilms.com Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com
@ delphianrecords
7
I. Psalm 121 [3:11]
8
II. Psalm 67 [5:18]
9
III. Psalm 23 [3:30]
10
IV. Psalm 117
[0:45]
11
V. Psalm 59
[8:03]
12
Fanfares and Rounds for organ solo
Evening Canticles 13
Magnificat (The King’s Service)
[2:28]
14
Nunc dimittis (The King’s Service)
[2:59]
Total playing time
@ delphianrecords @ delphian_records
[11:09]
All tracks are premiere recordings
[66:40]
Notes on the music This recording represents the product of more than a quarter of a century of my personal engagement with choral music. My most important early musical memories are of singing in a choir: between the ages of 8 and 13 I was a chorister at Tewkesbury Abbey, where for five happy years I was immersed in the world of Anglican choral music, from Tudor composers such as Byrd and Tallis to the music Howells and Leighton wrote four centuries later. It was while I was a chorister that I started composing – and of course I mainly wrote for choir, directly imitating the music I was singing every day. While it was that experience that set me on the path to becoming a composer, my engagement with choral music has been by no means a continuous one. As a student, I discovered the rich world of contemporary music and, taking my lead from that repertoire, I became interested above all in musical complexity. This type of complexity is much more practical when written for instruments rather than voices, and choral music came to seem very distant from my musical concerns. With two such different influences prominent in my musical development, it is therefore with both surprise and a feeling of inevitability that I find myself, a little over a decade after my student years, presenting a portrait album of my choral music. Traces of this dual musical heritage can, I think, be found in the music presented here, and the music contains what I hope is a productive
stylistic ambivalence. Although the music is consistently accessible (to the listener, that is: much of it is extremely difficult to perform), it situates itself broadly within the modernist tradition, and could not have existed without a close study of that repertoire. It is also, however, music steeped in the sounds of Anglican cathedrals and churches; Psalm 59, for example, takes its cue most directly from Stanford’s anthem For Lo, I Raise Up. This ambivalence can be found from the very first music on the recording: the Kyrie of the Mass for soprano solo, choir and organ. The soundworld is deliberately archaic, and the white-note modal writing and extremely simple rhythms are evocative above all of Renaissance counterpoint. At the start and end of the movement, however, the thread of the music is passed between soloist and choir in a hocket. This passing of the musical line occurs on every syllable, meaning that the words are implied but not explicitly stated. The soloist, for example, sings ‘Ky-’ and ‘-e’, with the choir filling in the ‘-ri-’. For the first of many times, we have music that is simultaneously old and new (although it should be noted that hocketing is itself originally a medieval technique). Much of the text setting elsewhere in the Mass employs a playful disruption of natural speech rhythms. The Gloria, for example, opens with extravagantly florid ornamentation, and such is the density of grace notes, trills and mordents
that the semantic content of the text is almost totally eclipsed. In the ‘Domine Deus’ section for soprano solo and organ which follows, and again in the opening solo section of the Sanctus, long rests can frequently be found in the middle of words, again compromising the literal semantic content of the words while I hope remaining true to their spirit. If the soloist is, as a general rule, given the more stylistically exploratory music in the Mass, much of the choir’s contribution sounds more familiar. Both the Gloria and the Sanctus culminate in sustained passages for choir – joined at the climax of the Gloria by the soloist. Although the intention is never to create a collage of different styles, there is a sense in which different stylistic tendencies are interacting with each other on a structural level, with the choir’s function frequently being to resolve the tensions that the soloist’s music generates. Another modernist idea that appears repeatedly throughout the music in this collection is the tendency to superimpose contrasting musical materials. The Benedictus opens with long, lyrical solo soprano lines accompanied – if accompanied is the right word – by staccato rhythmic figures in the choir. The two soundworlds undercut each other and create a distinctive tension, which, as in previous movements, is resolved by an extended passage for tutti choir. In this passage, they sing a long, slow build-up reminiscent, to my mind at least,
of the Prelude to Wagner’s Das Rheingold. This, more than any of the other music here, was where I was imagining a cavernous cathedral acoustic, where sounds reverberate seemingly indefinitely and create a sense of sonic wonder, in my experience almost impossible to achieve in a dryer concert-hall acoustic. One of the compositional opportunities presented to the composer by the Mass text is the appearance of the words ‘Hosanna in excelsis’ at the end of both the Sanctus and the Benedictus. These two moments are thus linked to each other, and that raises the question for the composer of how, and to what extent, the music of the two Hosannas will relate. I chose to set them as differently as I possibly could. At the end of the Sanctus, the choir sing Hosanna six times, at a dynamic of fff, the loudest dynamic they sing in the whole Mass, and with the first sopranos singing a top B flat, the highest note they sing in the whole Mass. A quiet Hosanna sung by the soloist to round off the movement does little to lessen the effect of uncontained joy. By contrast, at the end of the Benedictus, Hosanna is sung only once, by the upper voices and for the most part at a pianissimo dynamic. This functions to undermine the previous, more straightforwardly celebratory setting of the word, and render it freshly ambiguous. Although it was not my intention to shy away from the joyful passages of the Mass text, I wanted to retain a sense of the human, and I
Notes on the music hope that my Mass is not a piece to offer easy certainties. There follows an Interlude for solo organ, in which the harmonically bare and obsessively static accompaniment is a reference to musical depictions of the pastoral. The specific referent here is the piano accompaniment of the final song of Schubert’s Winterreise, ‘Der Leiermann’ – a piece that makes numerous appearances over the course of the Mass. Some listeners may also spot a repeated quotation of the last of Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19. The pastoral topic – and the Schubert reference – reappear in more veiled form in the Agnus Dei, where the pure simplicity of the open fifth with which the piece begins gradually gives way to denser harmonic writing and more florid textures before returning, in the organ postlude, to the fifth-based harmonies with which the movement started. The compositional process of Evening Psalms was a gradual one, taking place over a number of years. Completed in 2019 with this recording in mind, it began in 2014 in response to a commission from my old school, Malvern College, who asked me to write a piece to celebrate its 150th birthday. The request was for a setting of Psalm 121, which famously begins ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’; in this particular context, then, the hills in question are the Malverns. In my setting of the psalm, a heavily ornamented soprano solo line somewhat
reminiscent of the opening of the Gloria from the Mass is offset by placid sustained chords in the choir. Setting famous texts such as Psalm 121 is something I have enjoyed, and my Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’, is another example. There are already many well-known settings of Psalm 23, and I find it stimulating to engage with them as a composer, giving me the opportunity to situate myself with reference to that tradition, accepting certain aspects of it while reinventing others. My setting of Psalm 23 is another example of the layering technique to be found in numerous places in this collection. Here, the outer sections feature extremely calm music in the choir set against much livelier writing for the organ. The effect is again to create tension, bringing to the fore the hint of uncertainty that I think is inherent in the text. The three other psalms included in Evening Psalms are much less well known. The text of Psalm 67 is jubilant, and invites a relatively straightforward musical setting, albeit one with a significantly virtuosic organ solo between the two main sections. My rendering in music of Psalm 117 is something of a musical joke. Psalm 117 is the shortest of the 150 psalms, containing only two verses. I set the text at a very fast pace, in order to emphasise the extreme brevity of the psalm. The only exception to this approach is the word ‘endureth’, which is set repeatedly and in a sustained manner, and
which itself endures for significantly more than half the length of the psalm setting. Psalm 59, chosen for its references to making a noise like a dog, constitutes a dramatic finale to the cycle. If the technique of the piece is characteristically twentieth- or twentyfirst-century, with Stravinsky’s presence never far from the surface of the rhythmic language, the spirit of the music inhabits the Anglican tradition perhaps more straightforwardly than anything else here. As a teenager I played the organ relatively seriously, but, with the exception of the Interlude in the Mass, I had not until recently written for solo organ. Fanfares and Rounds, written specifically for this recording, represents my first extended work for the instrument. The piece is in three parts: the first is fast and fanfare-like,
the second slow and meditative, before a final section based on a repeated descending scale. This figure, which has appeared in a number of my pieces over the last few years, is intended to represent a round of bells. The last music on the recording is the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis from my King’s Service, written for The Choir of King’s College London in 2020. Instead of embracing the celebratory atmosphere of the Magnificat in any straightforward way, I wrote a setting of the text that is hushed and understated, and decidedly less sure of itself than conventional Magnificat settings. It is joyful music – but quietly, ambiguously joyful. The Nunc dimittis expresses its text much more directly. Simeon’s prayer is set as a gentle sarabande, bringing the collection to a peaceful close. © 2022 Edward Nesbit
The socially distanced, COVID-secure recording sessions we held for this recording in June 2021 were a far cry from the circumstances we had anticipated when embarking on the project. I first worked with The Choir of King’s College London in 2018, when their Director Joe Fort conducted the premiere of my Mass in King’s College Chapel. Following that performance, Joe suggested that we work with Delphian Records on an album of my choral music. I was of course very keen to pursue this idea, and delighted when soprano Ruby Hughes agreed to work with us. No sooner had we raised enough money to go ahead with the project, however, than the pandemic hit. Plans to record in summer 2020 had to be shelved due to COVID restrictions, and we were relieved finally to be able to record the following summer. A year on from those sessions I am happy that we are able to release the recording, which represents the culmination of a project four years in the making. I would like to thank Joe, Ruby, Josh and The Choir of King’s College London for their brilliance and dedication in preparing it. Many thanks also to the Fenton Arts Trust, RVW Trust and King’s College London for providing the funding which made this recording possible. — Edward Nesbit
Texts and translations Mass 1
I. Kyrie Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.
4
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. 6
2
3
II. Gloria Gloria in excelsis Deo: et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens. Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe; Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris. Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis. Quoniam tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe. Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.
Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of good will. We praise you. We bless you. We worship you. We glorify you. We give you thanks for your great glory. Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty. Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father: Who take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Who take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Who sit at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us. For only you are Holy, only you are Lord, only you are Most High, Jesus Christ. With the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
III. Sanctus Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. Dominus Deus Sabaoth: Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis.
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.
IV. Benedictus Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini: Hosanna in excelsis.
Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.
VI. Agnus Dei Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
Evening Psalms 7
I. Psalm 121 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
Texts and translations 8
9
II. Psalm 67 God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us. That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.
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III. Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
IV. Psalm 117 O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord. V. Psalm 59 Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men. For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold. Thou therefore, O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear? But thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence. The God of my mercy shall prevent me: God shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies. Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter
them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield. For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips let them even be taken in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak. Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied. But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble. 14 Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.
13
Magnificat My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations. He hath shewed strength with his arm:
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away. He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel: as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen. Nunc dimittis Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation: which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the gentiles: and to be the glory of thy people Israel. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Biographies
Following some twenty years under the leadership of David Trendell, the choir has been directed since 2015 by Joseph Fort.
photo © Kaupo Kikkas
In addition, the choir gives many concert performances. Recent festival appearances in England include the Barnes Music Festival, London Handel Festival, Oundle International Festival, St Albans International Organ Festival, Spitalfields Festival, and the Christmas and Holy Week Festivals at St John’s Smith Square. In 2017 the choir joined forces with Britten Sinfonia to give the UK premiere of Samuel Barber’s The Lovers (chamber version) at Kings Place, the performance described in The Times as ‘sung beautifully, the voices judiciously blended’. The choir tours widely, with recent destinations including Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Nigeria and the USA. In 2017 it served as choir-in-residence for the Northeast Convention of American Guild of Organists and Royal Canadian College of Organists in Montreal.
The choir has made many recordings, and enjoys an ongoing relationship with Delphian Records. Recent recordings include the German Requiem of Johannes Brahms in its 1872 English-language setting (DCD34195), Masses for Double Choir by Kenneth Leighton and Frank Martin (DCD34211), Advent Carols from King’s College London (DCD34226), and The Cloud Messenger by Gustav Holst, in a chamber version by Joseph Fort (DCD34241). These recordings have received wide critical acclaim. Their most recent release with Delphian saw a collaboration with guitarist Sean Shibe on a large-scale work by Lliam Paterson (Say it to the Still World, DCD34246), and their next recording will be Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil.
Joseph Fort is the College Organist & Director of the Chapel Choir and Lecturer in Music at King’s College London. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, and is active as a conductor and musicologist. Joseph is responsible for chapel music at King’s, conducting the choir in the weekly Eucharist and Evensong services during term. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and on
US radio, and records for Delphian Records. A CD of the Masses for Double Choir of Leighton and Martin (DCD34211) was described in Gramophone as ‘a performance of astonishing intensity and musicality … Joseph Fort is clearly in his element with this music and drives his singers onward with an almost hypnotic zeal’. His conducting debut with Britten Sinfonia was met with acclaim from The Times, and 2022 sees his debuts with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Hanover Band. Festival conducting appearances across the world include the Festival de México, the White Nights Festival of St Petersburg, the Montreal Organ Festival, the London Handel Festival, the St Albans International Organ Festival and the conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. He was recently appointed Director of Music at St Paul’s Knightsbridge, where he directs the professional choir. Joseph’s research focuses on eighteenthcentury music and dance, and he is currently completing a monograph on Haydn and minuets. He has published in the EighteenthCentury Music journal, and has chapters in books with Cambridge University Press and Leipzig University Press. A dedicated teacher, Joseph lectures on a variety of topics at King’s, and regularly gives talks for music societies and festivals. In 2018 his teaching was recognised with the Fellowship of the
Higher Education Academy. Prior to Harvard, he studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the organ scholar, and at the Royal Academy of Music, who in 2017 elected him to their Associateship.
Winner of the First and Audience prizes at the London Handel Singing Competition 2019, Ruby Hughes is a former BBC New Generation Artist. She is building an impressive discography; for Delphian she has recorded Stravinsky’s Cantata (DCD34246). In 2018 she released a disc with Laurence Cummings and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment dedicated to Giulia Frasi, Handel’s lyric muse. Her recording of seventeenth-century vocal chamber music, Heroines of Love and Loss received huge critical acclaim including a Diapason d’or award, while an album of works by Mahler, Berg and Rhian Samuel with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was nominated for a Gramophone Award; she also appears on Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Minnesota Symphony under Osmo Vänskä and most recently a solo recital disc with Joseph Middleton titled Songs for New Life and Love, including works by Mahler, Ives and Helen Grime.
photo © Phil Sharp
The Choir of King’s College London is one of the leading university choirs in England, in existence since its founding by William Henry Monk in the middle of the nineteenth century. The choir today consists of some thirty choral scholars reading a variety of subjects. The choir’s principal role at King’s is to provide music for chapel worship, with weekly Eucharist and Evensong offered during term, as well as various other services. Services from the chapel are regularly broadcast on BBC Radio. The choir also frequently sings for worship outside the university, including at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
She has a passion for performing new repertoire and is a champion of female composers, having
Biographies had many commissions written for her including by Helen Grime, Deborah Pritchard, Judith Weir and Errolyn Wallen. Future highlights include appearances with the Orchestre d’Ile de France (Mahler’s Symphony No. 4), Stuttgart Philharmonic (Britten’s Les Illuminations), Residente Orchestra (Mahler, Rückert Lieder), Orchestre National de Lille (Mozart, Great Mass in C), Potsdam Kammerakademie, Aarhus Symfoniorkester and recitals at WIgmore Hall and at the Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent. Joshua Simões began his musical education as a chorister at Westminster Abbey under James O’Donnell, singing in a wide range of services and recordings, most notably, the Royal Wedding in 2011. It was at Harrow School where Joshua began learning the organ and in 2017, Joshua began studying on an Organ Foundation Year at the Royal Academy of Music with Anne Marsden-
The Choir of King’s College London Thomas. Currently Joshua is a final-year undergraduate at the RAM, and has studied the organ with David Titterington since 2018, improvisation with Gerard Brooks, choral conducting with Patrick Russill and harpsichord with James Johnstone. He has received several awards at RAM, including the William John Kripps Scholarship, the Dorothy Cooper Organ Prize and the Norman Askew Organ Prize, and in 2020 was a prizewinner at the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition. Recent concert appearances include St John’s Smith Square, Liverpool Cathedral, Duke’s Hall, Neresheim Abbey, and St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh and he has worked with Orion Orchestra, Strand Consort, the Renaissance Singers and The Choir of King’s College London. Joshua has taken masterclasses with Bine Bryndorf, Hans Davidsson, Susan Landale and David Ponsford. Joshua has collaborated with composers such as Robin Haigh, Carmen Ho, Simon Rowland-Jones and Edward Nesbit in performing world premieres of their work.
Soprano Isobel Coughlan Lucy Ganss Sarah James Arabella Lewis Jennifer Spencer Katie Walker Ciara Williams Alto Dan Bisset Thomas Hood Lily Robson Jessica Smith April West Tenor Daniel Lewis Glyn Webster Alexander White Andrew Woodmansey Bass Nicholas Bacon Marcus Cox Sebastian Johnson Henry Page John Sturt Organ Joshua Simões
Lliam Paterson: Say it to the Still World Sean Shibe electric guitar, The Choir of King’s College London / Joseph Fort DCD34246
Multi-award-winning Sean Shibe, widely recognised as the leading guitarist of his generation, joins Delphian regulars The Choir of King’s College London in these beguilingly conceived works by Shibe’s friend and compatriot Lliam Paterson, for the rare combination of choir with electric guitar. Say it to the still world casts Shibe as Orpheus with his lyre, in a work which draws fragments of text from poetry by Rilke to meditate on language, loss and the transcendent power of song. Elegy for Esmeralda is a rawer, angrier response to grief, while poppies spread – composed especially, like the other two works, for the performers who bring it to life here – is a further testament to art’s ability to reflect and transform the outer world.
Rodion Shchedrin: The Sealed Angel Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge; Choir of King’s College London Geoffrey Webber & David Trendell conductors, Clare Wills oboe DCD34067
Two of Britain’s finest young choirs join forces and cross a continent to give voice to the sublime expressiveness of Rodion Shchedrin’s ‘Russian liturgy’, an astonishing statement of faith composed in the early days of perestroika. Shchedrin’s choral tableaux juxtapose tenderness with bracing sonic impact, and are shadowed throughout by a plangent solo oboe representing the soul of the Russian people. ‘Caught here in fine sound, this is a splendid disc of a multifaceted, many-layered modern masterpiece’ — Gramophone, June 2009, EDITOR’S CHOICE
‘Fort’s evocative choir and Shibe's moody though equally ecstatic electric guitar ... Gorgeous’ — The Scotsman, November 2021, ***** Holst: The Cloud Messenger The Choir of King’s College London, The Strand Ensemble / Joseph Fort
In Memoriam The Choir of King’s College London / Gareth Wilson
DCD34241
DCD34146
In 1910, after seven years of work, Gustav Holst completed his choral– orchestral masterpiece, The Cloud Messenger. But following a disappointing premiere in 1913 the piece fell into obscurity, and has received only a handful of performances. This crowning glory from the composer’s Sanskrit period deserves to be much better known. Telling the powerful fifth-century story of an exiled yaksha who spies a passing cloud and sends upon it a message of love to his distant wife in the Himalayas, it is rich in its harmonic language and ingenious in its motivic construction, and points the way to Holst’s next major work, The Planets. This colourful chamber version by conductor Joseph Fort lends the more tender passages a new intimacy and clarity, while retaining much of the force of the original.
The choir which David Trendell directed for twenty-two years pays tribute in a collection of specially chosen pieces by David’s colleagues, friends and former students, interspersed with the Renaissance polyphony which was Trendell’s area of scholarly expertise. His deep love for the Song of Songs has inspired many of the inclusions, and its nature imagery threads through the disc, adding a suggestion of renewal and rebirth to the memorial tone of works written in the difficult months after his untimely death. The composers’ affection for David and gratitude for his life and musical achievements is matched by the intelligence and deep musicality of the choir which he raised to an international reputation, and which here takes on a sophisticated and challenging programme in his memory.
‘[Fort’s arrangement shows] sensitivity, skill and an evident love for Holst’s visionary, rapturously romantic score ... The singing, too, has a lovely sweetness and purity of tone’ — Gramophone, July 2020
‘The choir sings with assured intonation and a controlled vibrancy … For quality of performance and diversity of repertoire, this is an outstanding disc’ — Choir & Organ, March/April 2016, *****
DCD34256