in your DREAMS
1 Anon., arr. Ellie Slorach (b. 1994) Golden slumbers * [2:56]
Elspeth Piggott, Sarah Keirle sopranos, Jessica Conway alto
2 Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) Sleep [4:38]
3 William Shakespeare (1564–1616) Are you sure that we are awake? [0:23] (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV, scene i)
4 Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (b. 1963) Pseudo-Yoik [2:25]
5 Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) A Dream within a Dream [1:09]
Charlie Perry reader
6 Billy Joel (b. 1949) Lullabye (Goodnight, my angel) [3:43] arr. Philip Lawson (b. 1957)
7 Mátyás Seiber (1905–1960) There was an old lady of France [0:48] (Three Nonsense Songs, No. 1)
8 John Keats (1795–1821) To Sleep [1:08]
Edmund Phillips reader
9 Josef Rheinberger (1839–1901) Abendlied, Op. 69 no. 3 [3:02]
10 William Shakespeare He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache [0:17] (from Cymbeline, Act V, scene iv)
11 Mátyás Seiber There was an old person of Cromer [0:48] (Three Nonsense Songs, No. 2)
12 Ēriks Ešenvalds (b. 1977) Only in sleep
ELLIE SLORACH
director
was an old man in a tree
(Three Nonsense Songs, No. 3) 15 William Shakespeare Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises [0:37] (from The Tempest, Act III, scene ii)
Sarah Keirle reader 16 Camden Reeves (b. 1974) The Maze of Sleep [6:38] 17 William Shakespeare Sonnet 27 [1:03] Felicity Hayward reader 18 Kristina Arakelyan (b. 1994) Train Ride * [4:25]
Soundscape Sleep-talking [0:46]
Edmund Jolliffe (b. 1976) Be not afeard * [3:51] 21 William Shakespeare We are such stuff as dreams are made on [0:12] (from The Tempest, Act IV, Scene i)
22 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) The cloud-capp’d towers [2:21] (Three Shakespeare Songs, No. 2) 23 Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) The Moon [0:55] Louise Ashdown reader 24 Laura Mvula (b. 1986) & Steven James Sing to the moon [3:53] Brown (1954–2024), arr. Laura Mvula Eleonore Cockerham soprano Total playing time [53:40] * premiere recordings
In Your Dreams quickly establishes three things about Kantos Chamber Choir. First is the distinct flavour of artistic director Ellie Slorach’s imaginative programming, that draws longer sequences out of the strands connecting choral music to other forms of artistic expression. In Your Dreams takes a concert programme – first heard in Manchester in October 2024 – and turns it into a single-span concept album. Through soundscapes, poetry, works old and new, and humorous asides, Kantos deals, comprehensively yet approachably, with all things dreams and dreaming.
The second thing is the particular tone this adventure takes. Don’t be surprised if you hear the occasional snore, the odd moment of text that jumps out, or the beautiful and the bizarre appearing in close proximity. This is a choir that doesn’t take itself too seriously, while also acknowledging that levity and profundity can complement each other powerfully.
The third and most important thing is the choir’s distinctive sound. Manchester and the surrounding area has a strong tradition of choral singing, but one that’s markedly different to the sacred contexts which have shaped the dominant small-choir sound of these isles. Kantos’s sound is not something honed in evensongs, but instead is a product of a diversity of singing cultures; of the
secular singing programmes at Manchester’s universities and conservatoires, and of the small professional groups and settings around the North West, where professional church music performance is only one of many parts of the singers’ professional work. In the decade that Slorach has spent developing the choir, she’s come to embrace the multitude of voices as the choir’s biggest strength, and the starting point for her choral idea. Kantos’s open, resonant, freely vibrating voices help make this release – Kantos’s first for Delphian – a particularly distinctive one.
That distinctive sound takes a while to emerge, however. A texture of rustling sleep sounds provides a frame; the choir awakens slowly, forming the textural underlay for the rich, mature, free-flowing soloists that begin the lullaby Golden Slumbers. Slorach’s arrangement – of a tune her mother would sing to her as a child – puts a glowing frame around Thomas Dekker’s sleepy words, but there’s something discomfiting about the piece, too. As the ensemble slides through the Eric Whitacre-inspired chromatic harmonies, moments of crunch and clarity arrive in unexpected places, already suggesting that this slumber might be disrupted.
fully, almost scarily, into a deep trance. In 1999, Whitacre set Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost for choir; unbeknown to Whitacre, Frost’s estate had recently forbidden any new settings of his poetry. Rather than wait for the poem to come into the public domain, Whitacre instead asked his close collaborator Charles Anthony Silvestri to fit words around the existing piece. From a basis in Frost’s imagery, Silvestri positions sleep as something we all must eventually surrender to.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sleep is both a plot device and a means of justifying some of the mad events of that evening. A few lines from Demetrius towards the end of Act IV, scene i, suggests the characters are in a dreamy middle world. (A few moments later, though, he seems more convinced about his situation: ‘Why, then, we are awake. Let’s follow him,’ he says as the lovers exit the stage, following Theseus. ‘And by the way, let us recount our dreams.’)
chords dominate the writing for lower voices, moving in grinding parallel motion through a series of time changes. It’s driven by these shifts in rhythm, some high-flying upper-voice rushes, and by a distinctive timbral quality, which Mäntyjärvi at one point describes as ‘almost painfully nasal’. For a moment, it’s as if the spirit of Spike Milligan invades the choir; the text is completely meaningless, a vehicle for strange sounds.
If Golden Slumbers introduces the idea of sleep interrupted by contrasting dark and lightness, then Whitacre’s own Sleep falls
The dreams we really want to recount, though, are the ones that make the least sense. Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s Pseudo-Yoik, intended as a satire of Finnish stereotypes of music from Lapland, is like the act of trying to recall a dream, building on familiar building blocks but struggling to get past the simple fact that none of it makes sense. The piece is rhythmic and spirited. Blocky, open-spaced
This is followed by two perspectives that see sleep as departure, to be lamented and appreciated in turn. In A Dream Within a Dream, Edgar Allan Poe introduces departure as something as gentle as ‘a kiss upon the brow’. That idea quickly unravels, and, after realising the futility of the struggle, the speaker succumbs to the inevitability of pain. For the narrator in Billy Joel’s Lullabye, meanwhile, departure is melancholic, and a chance to reminisce. Joel’s seven-year-old daughter asked him what happens when we die. ‘You go into other people’s hearts,’ he replied, and wrote this song as a means of expressing that. (‘Some day we’ll all be gone, but lullabyes go on and on,’ he sings in the final verse.) This arrangement was made for the King’s Singers and recorded on their 2005 album Six; the tone of In Your Dreams briefly shifts here, revealing Kantos’s softer, smoother, Swinglier side.
Mátyás Seiber’s Three Nonsense Songs, on poems by Edward Lear, are divided up through the album, serving as a reminder that dreams are not to be taken too seriously. The first concerns an old lady from France, who teaches ducklings to dance, with a tick-a-tack and a quack.
If sleep so far has been strange, nonsensical, or a metaphor for departure, then the poetry of John Keats – in his ode To Sleep – and the music of Josef Rheinberger understand sleep as blessed relief for the weary. The text from Rheinberger’s Abendlied comes from the gospel of Luke, when the disciples meet the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and invite him to eat with them. The anthem is popular in English evensong services, but this is a rather different take on that sound: a mature and natural resonance gives the choir the ringing power of one twice its size.
An interesting juxtaposition follows. More of Seiber’s nonsense – this time an old lady of Cromer, reading Homer, on one leg – contrasts with the sugary-sweet sounds of Ēriks Ešenvalds’ Only in sleep. Sara Teasdale’s poetry tells of sleep as a time capsule, where the (adult) narrator finds sleep the perfect moment to reminisce about childhood, wondering, in the final moments, if her childhood playmates remember her in the same glowing light. William Wordsworth follows, with his sonnet On Sleep describing
a battle with sleeplessness; Seiber’s jocular setting of Lear’s man stung by a bee is the kind of story one can only imagine when in a delirious, sleep-deprived state.
Camden Reeves is a composer Kantos has championed over the years. His piece for upper voices, Spells, Remedies and Potions, formed the centrepiece of the choir’s acclaimed programme based around the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612. Where Spells is built on dynamic imitative canons and harmonies composed of intricate hexachords, The Maze of Sleep has an altogether more hushed character, its counterpoints flowing rather than jagged, its harmonies more mysterious, unfolding almost seductively. Reeves sets the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith, a fantasy writer, ‘whose true vocation was poetry’, the composer writes. The poem is short, just four lines long; Reeves’s setting slips between Smith’s enigmatic expressions – sleep as ‘a pathless labyrinth’ – and vocalisations. The feeling is one of constant drift.
In Your Dreams is not simply a nighttime album, and the daydream experienced in Train Ride by the Armenian-British composer Kristina Arakelyan is one that’s absurd and strange. The piece is inspired by two strands: ‘the experience of living in a big city and spending much of one’s life on the train, as well as the experience of nonsensical dreams
where one disparate episode leads to the next’. Recognisable train motifs – chugging ostinatos, ‘choo choo’ chords – morph into strange shapes: the title phrase ‘Train Ride’ is taken apart, and put back together, as ‘Derrida’ and ‘Dada’, among other words. Later, Arakelyan invites the audience to submit their nonsensical dreams, which are read out by members of the choir all at once. ‘The idea is not to hear these dreams individually, but to create a sonic effect of a busy mind,’ she writes. The end of this journey sends the choir to sleep, and you can hear their faint snores and rustles in one of the handful of sleep-talking soundscapes scattered throughout the programme.
Of the various threads running through this album, Shakespeare’s relationship to sleep is one of the strongest. Preceding Arakelyan’s composition is the bard’s Sonnet 27, which speaks of the weird journey that begins ‘when body’s work’s expired’. Caliban’s Be not afeard speech from The Tempest, which introduces the sweet airs of Reeves’s Maze, was set by former Kantos Carol Competition winner Edmund Jolliffe; sprightly and optimistic at its core, the piece moves quickly and fluidly through a range of moods. Ralph Vaughan Williams too turned to The Tempest – this time, to the sorcerer Prospero – for The cloud-capp’d towers, the second movement of his Three Shakespeare Songs. The gorgeous palette of darkened harmonic
colours adds real depth to Prospero’s text, an interesting contrast with his speech concerning life’s transience. There’s a lightly classical flourish to the album’s final gestures, ending this journey through daydreaming in dialogue with the sky at night. Emily Dickinson remembers The Moon and ‘how she turns her perfect face / On the world below’. And, to close, singer-songwriter and composer Laura Mvula arranges her lush, comforting track Sing to the moon for choir. Hey broken soul, hold on, Mvula writes. Soon it will be morning. The dream cycle repeats again.
© 2025 Hugh Morris
Hugh Morris is an editor for VAN Magazine and writes about music for The New York Times
1 Golden slumbers
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby,
Thomas Dekker (c.1572–1632)
2 Sleep
The evening hangs beneath the moon, A silver thread on darkened dune. With closing eyes and resting head I know that sleep is coming soon.
Upon my pillow, safe in bed, A thousand pictures fill my head. I cannot sleep, my mind’s a-flight; And yet my limbs seem made of lead.
If there are noises in the night, A frightening shadow, flickering light, Then I surrender unto sleep, Where clouds of dream give second sight,
What dreams may come, both dark and deep, Of flying wings and soaring leap
As I surrender unto sleep, As I surrender unto sleep.
Charles Anthony Silvestri (b.1965)
3 Are you sure that we are awake?
Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV, scene i
5 A Dream within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow –
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand –
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep – while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
6
Lullabye (Goodnight, my angel)
Goodnight, my angel
Time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you’ve been asking me
I think you know what I’ve been trying to say I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Wherever you may go
No matter where you are I never will be far away
Goodnight, my angel
Now it’s time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay
And like a boat out on the ocean
I’m rocking you to sleep
The water’s dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart
You’ll always be a part of me
Goodnight, my angel
Now it’s time to dream
And dream how wonderful your life will be
Someday your child may cry
And if you sing this lullabye
Then in your heart
There will always be a part of me
Someday we’ll all be gone
But lullabyes go on and on …
They never die
That’s how you And I Will be
Billy Joel (b.1949)
7 Three Nonsense Songs
There was an old lady of France, Who taught little ducklings to dance; When she said ‘Tick-a-tack!’ They replied ‘Quack!’
Which grieved that old lady of France.
Edward Lear (1812–1888)
8 To Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes, Or wait the ‘Amen’, ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities. Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, –Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.
John Keats (1795–1821)
9 Abendlied
Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, und der Tag hat sich geneiget.
Luke 24: 29
Stay with us, for it will be evening, and the day is sinking.
11
Three Nonsense Songs
There was an old person of Cromer, Who stood on one leg to read Homer; When he found he grew stiff, He jumped over the cliff, Which concluded that person of Cromer.
Edward Lear
12 Only in sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was a child; Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten –What may have come to them, who can know? Yet we played last night as long ago And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, I met their eyes and found them mild –Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder, And for them am I too a child?
Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)
13 To Sleep
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky –
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless; and soon the small birds’ melodies
Must hear, first utter’d from my orchard trees, And the first cuckoo’s melancholy cry. Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth: So do not let me wear to-night away. Without thee what is all the morning’s wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
14 Three Nonsense Songs
There was an old man in a tree, Who was horribly bored by a bee; When they said, ‘Does it buzz?’
He replied, ‘Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!’
Edward Lear
15/20 Be not afeard
Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d I cried to dream again.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act III, scene ii
16 The Maze of Sleep
Sleep is a pathless labyrinth,
Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the exile clue of dreams, A gossamer thread, obscurely runs.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961)
With permission of CASiana Enterprises, the Literary Estate of Clark Ashton Smith
17 Sonnet 27
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul’s imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
William Shakespeare
18 Train Ride
Train ride, train ride ... I had a dream where I got on a train I took with me my active brain, Train ride, choo choo … Come and join me on this train ride, Let’s see what the next stop will hide! Next stop is happiness, Next stop is anxiety, Next stop is excitement, Next stop is levity.
Tango, dance your troubles away.
Train ride, train ride …
‘Am I a man dreaming that I am a butterfly?
Or am dreaming that I am a man?’
Train ride, train ride …
Kristina Arakelyan, quoting Zhuangzhi (4th c. BC)
20 see track 15
21/22 We are such stuff as dreams are made on / The cloud-capp’d towers
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, scene i
23 The Moon
The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond; Her cheek like beryl stone; Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known. Her lips of amber never part; But what must be the smile Upon her friend she could bestow Were such her silver will! And what a privilege to be But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament, The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt, Her dimities of blue.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
24 Sing to the moon
Hey there you, shattered in a thousand pieces,
Weeping in the darkest night;
Hey there you, try’na stand up on your own two feet
And stumblin’ through the sky.
Hey you, a broken soul,
Hey there, hold on, soon will be mornin’.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side. Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the tide
Hey there you, looking for a brighter season,
Need to lay your burden down
Hey there you, drowning in a helpless feelin’,
Buried under deeper ground.
Hey you, a broken soul …
Steven James Brown & Laura Mvula
Sing to the Moon lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Kantos Chamber Choir is a trailblazing vocal ensemble, performing at the cutting edge of the creative scene, producing vocal performances shaped by the music and stories that matter. The choir’s vision is to enrich lives by using its voices to tell universal stories and share human connection.
Believing that voices are a powerful gateway to our past, present and future, Kantos gives performances that explore emotions, identities and experiences through high quality musicmaking, inspired collaborations and breaking the boundaries of the choral status quo. The aim is to enrich the lives of audiences, evoking strong reactions, inspiring reflection and inviting the possibility of change.
The doors to Kantos’s performances are open to everyone from veteran concert-goers to those seeking something new. Whether it’s a factory space or a spiritual place, the concert hall or a nightclub, audiences are guaranteed a creative, dynamic and often ground-breaking musical experience.
Performing music by everyone from eleventhcentury visionary saints to genre-bending, experimental rock stars, Kantos prides itself on championing contemporary and well-known choral music.
Alongside self-promoted performances and tours across the North, Kantos’ recent
highlights include sell-out performances of Handel’s Messiah with the choir’s Artistic Partner Manchester Camerata; broadcasting live on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Breakfast for their ‘seasonal journey’ Carols Across the Country at the start of Advent 2024; and recording with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for a world premiere album of Danny Elfman’s music.
Conductor Ellie Slorach is the Founder and Artistic Director of Kantos, Associate Conductor of Royal Northern Sinfonia and Engagement Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. She specialises in large scale multimedia and educational projects across all genres including orchestras, operatic, choral and dance performances.
Based in Manchester, Ellie has a strong presence in the North of England, with performances in 2024/5 with the Orchestra of Opera North, the BBC Philharmonic, the Royal Northern Sinfonia and the BBC Concert Orchestra. In 2025, she will conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for the first concert performances of Jonathan Dove’s new opera Uprising in Saffron Walden, Glasgow and Edinburgh in collaboration with Glyndebourne. In February 2025, Ellie will be returning to Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, where she held the position of Assistant Conductor in the 2021/2 season, for
performances of music by Stéphane Orlando, collaborating with hip-hop and break-dancers from the dance company No Way Back.
Equally at home in the choral repertoire, Ellie holds the position of Associate Choral Director with Huddersfield Choral Society. Other upcoming highlights include debuting with the choir Sansara, leading the Dunedin Consort Choral Weekend, and conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonia Smith Square and the Estonian National Male Choir.
Other recent career highlights have included her debut at the BBC Proms at The Glasshouse Gateshead with the Royal Northern Sinfonia as well as debuts with Matthew Bourne’s ballet production of Edward Scissorhands at Sadler’s Wells. Ellie also filmed a multimedia concert with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and she was selected to film with the BBC
Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers for the new season of the acclaimed BBC 10 Pieces.
Ellie studied Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music and was awarded Associate Membership (ARNCM) in 2023.
Kantos Chamber Choir
Sopranos
Eleonore Cockerham
Felicity Hayward
Sarah Keirle
Elspeth Piggott
Megan Rickard
Lydia Wonham
Altos
Louise Ashdown
Jessica Conway
Alison Daniels
Lucy Vallis
Tenors
Alistair Donaghue
Jonny Maxwell-Hyde
Charlie Perry
Matt Pope
Basses
Sam Gilliatt
Jonny Hill
Edmund Phillips
Jonathan Pratt
Jonty Ward
Kantos Chamber Choir are incredibly grateful for the support we have received from many individuals and trusts who have supported the creation of this recording. Particular thanks go the following:
The Haworth Trust, The Ida Carroll Trust, The Rundell Music Trust, Millgatehouse.com, Andrew Day & Ann Storey, Andrew Kyle, Chris & Eleanor, Christine Davison, Christopher Cotton, Diana, Michael & LucyAnne Fletcher, Elke Cymorek, Emily Mitchell & Marcus Hogg, H. Leggat, Helen M. Crich, Hugh & Tessa Shercliff, Iona & Lochie
Slorach, Irene Gibbons, Kevin Saunders, Lucy Rawcliffe, Maria Passingham, Mary & John Brierley, Max Thomas, Oliver Kabi, Paul Harding, Robert & Brigida Greenwood, Rod & Yvonne Thomas, Steve Brosnan, Sue & Geoff Taylor, Tim & Jenny Kelly, Tom Russell, Victoria Bache
Recorded on 28-29 October 2024 at Hallé
at St Michael’s, Manchester
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Design: Drew Padrutt
Cover: Will Coates-Gibson Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Session photography: Will Coates-Gibson/Foxbrush Choir group photography: Eve Powers Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK
www.delphianrecords.com
Sleeper’s Prayer: choral music from North America
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas
DCD34232
Merton and Nicholas’ latest recording, focusing entirely on American music of the last forty years, begins as a striking ‘double portrait’ of two composers who have written or arranged works especially for the choir. The austere postminimalism of David Lang, in three pieces informed by elements of Jewish liturgy and thought, provides a striking foil to Nico Muhly’s more richly referential approach, that draws on his lifelong love of the Anglican tradition. Two solo organ works by Muhly and a transcription from his mentor Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha are set in context alongside the more stylistically eclectic yet no less powerfully communicative sound-worlds of Libby Larsen and Abbie Betinis. Two final choral items draw on pre-existing traditions of the spiritual and the Baptist hymnal, in moving demonstration of the New World’s ability to honour its past while gazing firmly ahead.
‘a fantastic disc ... It gives a really enjoyable overview of what choral music is for and how wide is its reach’ — BBC Radio 3, Record Review, May 2020
Wisdom & Strength: contemporary sacred choral music
Siglo de Oro, Simon Hogan organ; Patrick Allies director
DCD34337
Siglo de Oro’s debut recording, Drop Down Ye Heavens, blazoned the choir’s commitment to new music. Nine years on, Wisdom and Strength takes the listener through the liturgy of an imaginary Sunday in settings by a clutch of diverse living composers, while at the same time traversing the spiritually richest parts of the Church’s year – the darkness of Lent and Holy Week, the joy of Easter, and the mysterious beauty and power of the feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity. To this programme, Siglo de Oro brings the same imagination and flair that have won the choir huge critical acclaim for its approach to programming and performing early music.
New in February 2025
When Love Speaks: choral music by Owain Park
The Epiphoni Consort / Tim Reader
DCD34239
The Epiphoni Consort follow up their acclaimed Delphian debut, of music by David Bednall, with a portrait album of another young choral composer on the ascendant. Still in his late twenties, Owain Park’s innate understanding of the choral medium is shown in the skilfully contrasted weights and colours of Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time, one of two Shakespeare cycles included here, and the Epiphoni singers make the most of the luxuriant chordal writing that characterises Park’s style as a whole – what his former teacher John Rutter has described as ‘towers of sound’. The choir is joined by a solo violin for the call-and-response patterns of Antiphon for the Angels, while Sing to me, windchimes movingly sets loss and yearning alongside poetic images of spring and rebirth.
‘Owain Park has been uncommonly well served by Tim Reader and The Epiphoni Consort. The singing is consistently fine and impeccably disciplined … the sound is expertly focused and clear’ — MusicWeb International, July 2020
Music for the Queen of Heaven: contemporary Marian motets
The Marian Consort, Rory McCleery director
DCD34190
The Marian Consort originally made its name with the music of the Renaissance. But the group has also worked regularly with living composers for a number of years. This programme of contemporary Marian anthems – many of them commissioned by the ensemble – celebrates a living, developing tradition where the new is always informed by the old, casting fresh, vital light on these ancient words.
‘An outstanding, memorable disc … Tuning, ensemble and balance are immaculate. That would be no mean achievement in polyphonic music but here where the composers’ demands can be even greater it’s particularly impressive.’ — Music Web International, November 2017, recording of the month
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies: Sacred Choral Works
Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, Michael Bonaventure organ / Matthew Owens
DCD34037
In the 1960s few would have predicted that Peter Maxwell Davies would eventually write a set of Evening Canticles; yet religious texts have always been of fundamental importance to the composer, as this disc vividly demonstrates by bringing together sacred masterworks from both ends of his career. Tough, uncompromising and of surpassing beauty, Davies’ major contributions to the Anglican repertoire are given thrilling voice by these fearless champions of contemporary liturgical music.
KERENSA BRIGGS REQUIEM
Kerensa Briggs: Requiem
The Choir of King’s College London, Anita Monserrat mezzo-soprano, Richard Gowers baritone / Joseph Fort
DCD34298
‘the Edinburgh choristers respond with superlative performances, full of spirit but always secure and sensitive … the sound can only be described as luxurious.’
— Gramophone, December 2005
Precious Things: Choral Music by Bernard Hughes
The Epiphoni Consort / Tim Reader DCD34289
Devoted to Bernard Hughes’s choral music and programmed in close collaboration between the composer and The Epiphoni Consort, this portrait recording reveals a composer for whom musical style grows naturally out of the provenance of his commissions and their chosen texts. Himself a wordsmith, text setting and delivery are at the forefront of Hughes’s creative thinking, and Epiphoni, making a name for themselves in recordings of music by living British composers, are ideally suited to the delivery of Hughes’s diverse language, in performances that showcase their trademark luxuriant sound.
‘The choir makes a warm vibrant sound, yet with a lovely focused clarity and terrific attention to the words. Not only is there clarity of diction, but the words actually mean something. This is a very fine disc indeed to introduce Bernard Hughes’ intelligently and sympathetically written choral music’
— Robert Hugill, June 2022
Now in her early thirties, Kerensa Briggs could hardly have enjoyed a more salubrious childhood for a composer of sacred choral music, surrounded by music in Gloucester Cathedral close, singing in choirs and hearing the daily choral services. Briggs went on to study music and sing as a choral scholar at King’s College London, and her music and her understanding of the way the voice works have their roots in this deep immersion. This recording is the first dedicated to her music, in a portrait programme of premieres. Joseph Fort and The Choir of King’s College London continue to attract widespread critical acclaim, both for the ambition of their recorded programmes and for their polished and mature execution.
‘a substantial statement ... alluring and heartfelt music’ — BBC Music Magazine, July 2023
SONG
The Hermes Experiment
DCD34274
Hot on the heels of their acclaimed debut HERE WE ARE, The Hermes Experiment’s second Delphian album is an equally bold statement. Songs commissioned specially for the ensemble – by Philip Venables, Ayanna Witter- Johnson and others – are interleaved with new arrangements (of composers including Barbara Strozzi, Clara Schumann and Lili Boulanger) for the group’s distinctive line-up of voice, clarinet, harp and double bass. Moving and original, SONG reinvents a genre: here every instrument is a voice in its own right, and all four performers carry the drama.
‘Britain’s music scene offers numerous dynamic small-sized groups, but The Hermes Experiment, so spellbinding, so imaginative, continue to stand alone’ — The Times, October 2021
