Choral Classics from St John's
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SUPER AUDIO CD HEAR MY WORDS Choral Classics from St John’s Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge Andrew Nethsingha Gregorio Allegri Gregorio AKG Images, London Hear My Words: Choral Classics from St John’s Gregorio Allegri (1582 –1652) 1 Miserere mei, Deus 13:57 Edited by John Rutter Julius Foo • Peter Hicks • Thomas Mullock treble Leo Tomita counter-tenor Tristan Hambleton • Basil McDonald bass Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) 2 Ave, maris stella 3:16 No. 2 from To religiøse Kor (1899) Arranged by the composer from ‘Ave, maris stella’, EG 150 for voice and piano (1893) Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) 3 O virgin Mother of God (1990) 1:14 (Bogoróditse Djévo) Serge Rachmaninoff (1873 –1943) 4 O virgin Mother of God 2:46 (Bogoróditse Djévo) No. 6 from All-night Vigil, Op. 37 (1915) 3 Robert Parsons (c. 1535–1572) 5 Ave, Maria 5:40 Edited by Nicholas Steinitz Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594) 6 Exultate Deo 2:23 from Motettorum quinque vocibus, Liber quintus (Rome, 1584) Edited by Henry Washington Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585) 7 Agnus Dei 6:28 from Missa ‘Salve intemerata’ Edited by Andrew Parker and David Hill James MacMillan (b. 1959) 8 A New Song (1997)* 5:07 4 César Franck (1822–1890) 9 Panis angelicus (1872)*† 3:39 Interpolated in Messe à trois voix, Op. 12, M 61 (1861) Arranged by Wolfgang Hochstein Pablo Strong tenor Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) 10 Jubilate Deo* 3:13 from Morning Service in B flat major, Op. 10 (1879) Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) 11 O taste and see (1952) 1:34 Thomas Mullock treble John Rutter (b. 1945) 12 O Lord, thou hast searched me out (2007)*‡ 7:32 Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) 13 Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11 (1865)*† 5:26 Edited by John Rutter 5 Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848 –1918) 14 Hear my words, ye people (1894)* 14:12 Edward de Minckwitz bass Semi-chorus: Julius Foo • Alexander Bower-Brown • Thomas Mullock treble Leo Tomita counter-tenor Francis Williams tenor Tristan Hambleton bass ‘Hear my words, ye people’. Allegro moderato – ‘Clouds and darkness are round about him’. Allegro energico – ‘The Lord’s seat is in heaven’. Sostenuto – ‘Behold, the eye of the Lord is on them that fear him’. Poco più mosso – ‘He delivered the poor in his affliction’ – ‘The Lord is full of compassion’ – ‘O praise ye the Lord’. Allegro moderato TT 77:20 Helen Scarbrough cor anglais‡ Graham Walker cello† Timothy Ravalde organ* Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge Andrew Nethsingha On this recording, Graham Walker plays a cello made by Domenico Busan, kindly lent by Florian Leonhard. 6 Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge Director of Music counter-tenor Andrew Nethsingha Dominic Collingwood Nicholas Edwards Senior Organ Scholar James Imam Timothy Ravalde Leo Tomita treble tenor Robert Baldwin Julian Gregory Ethan Bamber Jonathan Langridge Alexander Bower-Brown Bradley Smith Francis Bushell Pablo Strong Julius Foo Francis Williams Benjamin Glass Peter Hicks bass Matthew Holman Edward de Minckwitz Andrew Jones Tristan Hambleton Thomas Last Huw Leslie Thomas Mullock Daniel Macklin Justin Stollery Basil McDonald Michael Tuft Henry Neill Thomas Williams 7 Ronald Knapp Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge in Randall Hodgkinson the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam Hear My Words: Choral Classics from St John’s From Moscow to Paris on one axis, and, indeed, mystique – derives from the from Glasgow to Rome on another, the fact that for many years it was performed geographical range of this CD is striking. The only in the Sistine Chapel. Like other works time span is equally wide: the earliest piece tied to a single place – here one thinks of dates from the first half of the sixteenth Parsifal, which Wagner tried to preserve for century, and the newest was composed Bayreuth alone – the Miserere became an as recently as 2007. Styles and genres object of pilgrimage. The pilgrims in this case are correspondingly varied. However, the included Mozart and Mendelssohn, both of selection is far from arbitrary. Several of whom noted the work down after leaving the the works are based on texts from the Vatican – a riskier enterprise for Mozart, as psalms, and three offer radically different Catholics reputedly faced excommunication interpretations of the ‘Ave, Maria’, the for copying or performing the piece outside so-called Angelic Salutation. Three also add a the Sistine Chapel. Given the duration of the solo instrument to the familiar mix of voices Miserere, this might seem a remarkable feat and organ. Perhaps most important, all the of memory; however, the music is highly pieces recorded here sit comfortably under repetitive, with a structure closely derived the rubric of ‘choral classics’, even if the from the text, Psalm 51. So, perhaps we most recent have yet to demonstrate – as should not stand in too much awe of Mozart they surely will – the ability to maintain a and Mendelssohn, at least on this account. firm foothold in the repertoire. So: a potpourri Though there are few more popular works in of delights to be enjoyed in sequence or the choral repertoire, the Miserere that most individually. people recognise today is very different from the composer’s original conception. Much of Allegri: Miserere mei, Deus the florid writing (the so-called abbellimenti) The disc begins with a great classic of Roman dates from long after Allegri’s death, though church music, Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere it is likely that the original would have been mei, Deus. Much of the work’s renown – decorated in some manner. And, perhaps 10 most shockingly, the soaring treble passages is not to deny the effectiveness of the work in that for many define the character of the its choral format. Subtle differences in phrase piece are almost certainly the result of later length and short echoes for high and low changes in pitch. (How could it be otherwise, voices help dissolve any sense of monotony given that the Sistine Chapel used falsettists that might arise from the simple, bi-strophic and castratos in Allegri’s day?) But, just as structure of the piece. misquoted versions of sayings often achieve greater currency than the originals, the Pärt: O virgin Mother of God version of the Miserere that we know today The first of the three ‘Ave, Maria’ settings, is now ineradicably lodged in the popular by the Estonian Orthodox composer Arvo consciousness. Pärt, forms part of a new liturgical tradition initiated by Stephen Cleobury of King’s Grieg: Ave, maris stella College, Cambridge – that of commissioning a Though he remained a believer throughout carol for each year’s Festival of Nine Lessons his life, Edvard Grieg had little sympathy for and Carols. Pärt’s offering, which bears the organised religion, and he eventually came Russian title Bogoróditse Djévo, was written to identify with the Unitarians’ unstructured for Christmas Eve 1990. Typically of the approach to worship. Given this, it is perhaps composer, textures are spare and, with its not surprising that his setting of ‘Ave, maris shifting rhythmic stresses, the music seems stella’ is one of only a small number of pieces to evoke a world of chanting priests; indeed, for choir. The work was originally conceived much of the piece could be ascribed to the as a song to a Danish text by Thor Lange. style sometimes known as ‘holy minimalism’. However, Grieg decided to use the familiar As if to challenge this taxonomy, there is ninth-century Latin text about Mary as star a short-lived flowering in the middle of of the sea when reworking it for choir. As has the work; as the music rises to a dramatic often been observed, this text may have had fortissimo scored for eight-part choir, the a particular attraction for Grieg, who spent confines of the chant are shattered, if only most of his life close to the sea in Norway. for a moment. Traces of a romantic piano texture can be detected in the lush eight-part chording and Rachmaninoff: O virgin Mother of God in the recurrent use of pedal points, but this Rachmaninoff’s setting of the ‘Ave, Maria’ 11 dates from the dying days of Imperial Russia. shapes the soprano line. Initially, each phrase It is one of the fifteen pieces that make up is set almost as a monotone, though rising the All-night Vigil (Vsenoshchnoye bdeniye), by one note with each entry. However, in the a collection completed in early 1915. Though final lines of the piece the soprano is cut much of Rachmaninoff’s output is marked by a loose from its repeated notes, and it is finally strong streak of nostalgia, it is hard in listening allowed to join as equal partner in the rich to Bogoróditse Djévo not to sense a tradition web of contrapuntal entries that make up the under threat. Indeed, the suppression of the concluding ‘Amen’. Rarely can this concluding Russian Orthodox Church following the 1917 word have inspired such luscious polyphony. Revolution deprived the work of an immediate liturgical purpose, and it was only in the Palestrina: Exultate Deo 1960s that this brief masterpiece started to Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Exultate be performed regularly. Like Grieg’s Ave, maris Deo is a setting of the opening lines of stella, Rachmaninoff’s Bogoróditse Djévo is Psalm 80. The text, like that of Psalm 150, predominantly chordal in style, and it often describes a colourful celebration of music; uses divided voices. However, unlike Grieg, here the psalmist calls for timbrel, psaltery, Rachmaninoff incorporates hints of Orthodox harp, and trumpet as aids to rejoicing. One chant, sublimated here within a rich harmonic does not always expect overt word-painting setting.