This most enjoyable collection was recorded in 2009, the 150th
anniversary of the consecration of George Gilbert Scott’s
chapel at Exeter College, Oxford. It is conducted by Alistair
Reid, Senior Organ Scholar at Exeter College. Apart from a list
of members, numbering some twenty-eight singers, there is no
information about the choir itself, but a photograph shows them
to be very young.
I had never heard Howells’
One thing have I desired before.
A setting of four verses from Psalm 27, it presents Howells at
his most perfumed, the highly charged harmonies perhaps more
than the text requires or can stand. That said, the composer’s
admirers, myself included, will have no doubts about it. It must
be fearsomely difficult to sing all those chords in tune!
The young-sounding voices of Exeter College are set a real challenge
in the two pieces from Parry’s glorious
Songs of Farewell,
especially when it comes to lines such as “I know myself
a Man, which is a proud and yet a wretched thing”. A stray
B flat creeps in where it shouldn’t just before the end
of
I know my soul hath power, but these are satisfying
performances nonetheless, even if they sound just a little like
work in progress when set beside the superbly prepared and executed
performances from the choir of Trinity College Cambridge and
Richard Marlow, first released on Conifer in 1967.
After the lovely performance of Harris’s tranquil, organ-accompanied
anthem,
Behold the tabernacle of God, Stanford’s
Op. 164
Magnificat comes as complete contrast. Unaccompanied,
this exuberant, joyful work would tax the endurance of any choir.
Certain passages might almost have been written in direct homage
to the double choir writing of J. S. Bach, and these passages
of rapid figuration could be more crisply delivered than they
are here. And though the performance as a whole is a convincing
one, there is a slight tendency to rawness in the singing when
the going gets tough.
Jonathan Dove is one of those composers whose music is both approachable
and recognisably modern. His
Ecce beatam lucem is beautifully
written for choir and organ, the textures perfectly complementing
each other. The music is suffused with light and energy, a fine
representation of the wonders of creation as explored in the
words. I can think of no higher praise than to say that as soon
as one has heard it one wants to hear it again. Less convincing,
to my mind, is
The Three Kings, an unaccompanied setting
of a poem by, of all people, Dorothy L. Sayers, and composed
for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College,
Cambridge in 2000. There is a wide range of mood in the piece,
from the fragile opening to the exuberant passage just before
the final section. Try as I might though, I don’t feel
that the composer’s heart was in it. The performance is
a fine one, though again one has the feeling that a little more
experience would help security in the trickier passages, just
as it might have rendered more convincing the rather dutiful
arpeggios that occur at two points in
Ecce beatam lucem.
Barely a hint of insecurity betrays the youth of the singers
in a convincing performance of Howells’
Coventry Antiphon,
written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in
1962, to a few carefully chosen lines from Isaiah and Haggai.
This superb and moving short work could have come from the pen
of no other composer. Holst’s
Nunc dimittis, for
double choir, finds the composer in surprisingly forceful mood,
especially the closing Gloria Patri. John Gardner is characteristically
boisterous in
We have a strong city.
The finest of the three pieces by Jonathan Dove is probably
I
will lift up mine eyes, commissioned for the chapel’s
150th anniversary in 2009. Whilst it is not always obvious what
it was in these
particular words that prompted this
particular music,
there can be no doubt that the combination of striking, held
chords, both in the choral and organ parts, with canonic writing,
results in a piece which is mightily impressive and extremely
beautiful. This listener did not find the closing chord as harmonically
ambiguous as does Alistair Reid, writing in the notes, but his
view that it represents in musical terms the notion of the eternity
of God’s promises is a convincing one, and the device would
seem to be more appropriate here than at the even more inconclusive
close of
Ecce beatam lucem. Jackson Hill’s piece
is less challenging musically and with a less powerful sense
of the composer’s own musical personality. It is calm and
tranquil, though the element of mystery contained in the words
has perhaps not fully found its way into the music. It is a lovely
piece, nonetheless, beautifully written for choir and organ,
and I will return to it with pleasure. The recital ends with
another fine Harris anthem for double choir which closes in tranquillity
with an Amen whose final chord is nonetheless, rather surprising.
It’s a cruel world, and judging this choir against the
finest, one or two weaknesses can be noted. There are fleeting
moments, usually barely more than a suspicion, that the group
is approaching the limit of its technical capacity. Poise is
occasionally lacking, and sometimes confidence too, particularly
in the men’s sections when singing alone. One should not
make very much of this, however, as excellent tuning can be set
against it, as may the attractive overall sound and skilful balancing,
not to mention the fervent advocacy of a fine and challenging
programme. The choir is caught in a natural acoustic, and the
playing of the two organists, Richard Moore and Joshua Hales,
is exemplary. Collectors interested in the ever-evolving British
choral tradition should not hesitate.
William Hedley
Choir of Exeter College, Oxford/Alistair Reid, with Richard Moore and Joshua
Hales (organ) 
