This is the tenth disc
in the admirable series of recordings
of English church music made for Naxos
by this choir. I presume this is the
final instalment in the series since
the recording was set down immediately
prior to the retirement of Christopher
Robinson after twelve years as the distinguished
Director of Music at St. John’s. I can
only regret that, apparently, there
was not an opportunity to make a disc
devoted to Parry.
Having heard, enjoyed
and admired the entire series I find
myself a little ambivalent about this
latest offering. I should say at once
that the standards of singing, organ
playing and recording are all fully
on a par with the previous issues. That
is to say, they are of the highest quality.
What is more uneven, I fear, is the
music included in the programme (and
I write as a committed Elgarian.) One
senses an element of scraping the barrel
to put together a programme. To be sure,
there are some fine works here, especially
the mighty Great is the Lord
and the lovely O hearken Thou. However,
I do think that it’s stretching things
a little to include the fine part song,
Go, Song of Mine in a collection
of sacred music. Furthermore
the three little pieces that comprise
Op. 2 and the very early setting of
O salutaris hostia are, frankly,
of rather limited interest.
The three anthems that
constitute Op. 2, though not published
until 1907 take us back to the years
in the late 1880s when Elgar was organist
of St. George’s Roman Catholic Church
in Worcester. He wrote quite a bit of
music for his choir but, so far as I
know, most of it remained unpublished.
However, a few weeks before his 50th
birthday he resurrected some of this
music. As Jerrold Northrop Moore puts
it in his magisterial Edward Elgar:
A Creative Life (1984): "From
fragments of anthems sketched long ago
for the choir of St George’s Church
in Worcester he culled an Ave Maria
and an Ave maris stella".
These he coupled with the Ave verum
corpus, which had been published
in 1902, and sent them to Novello’s
for publication as his Op. 2. I have
to say that all three pieces are a bit
conventional. The same applies to the
O salutaris hostia, which probably
was another St. George’s piece.
Far more interesting
and characteristic is the setting of
the Te Deum and its companion
canticle, the Benedictus. Elgar
was commissioned to write these pieces
for the opening service of the 1897
Three Choirs Festival. The commission
came from G. R. Sinclair, organist of
Hereford Cathedral where the Festival
was held that year. (Sinclair was later
immortalised in Variation 11 of the
Enigma Variations.) These were
not the first pieces by Elgar to be
heard at a Three Choirs Festival, the
Froissart overture had been played
at Worcester in 1890. However, the commission
for the opening service was a prestigious
one. Elgar responded with a strong,
direct Te Deum which, though
he was still trying to establish himself
as a composer on a national stage, sounds
like a confident statement of intent.
The St. John’s forces give a splendid
account of the work and are similarly
effective in the generally more reflective
Benedictus.
The disc also contains
two big anthems from Elgar’s maturity.
Give unto the Lord was written
for another important liturgical occasion,
the 1914 Festival of the Sons of the
Clergy at St. Paul’s Cathedral. This
fine setting combines musical splendour
and passages of more subdued beauty.
It makes a marvellous opening to this
CD. Give unto the Lord, first
heard in Westminster Abbey in 1912,
is, if anything, even finer. The choir’s
first phrase is especially memorable,
it’s quintessential Elgar. There’s an
important bass solo, which is well sung
here, and towards the end Elgar brings
back the opening material at the words
"For this God is our God".
The anthem is thrillingly performed
here; the choir gives its all without
any hint of over-singing. By contrast,
the other mature anthem, O hearken
Thou is wholly reflective in mood.
It’s a little gem, written for the coronation
of King George V in 1911, and this St.
John’s performance is a lovely one.
The recital also includes
extracts from two oratorios. The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me constitutes
the prologue to The Apostles and
is quite often heard as a stand-alone
anthem (indeed, I’ve sung it in this
way several times myself.) It works
very well in this format because it
is a self-contained movement within
the oratorio. The singers and organist
do it very well here and I particularly
appreciated their fastidious attention
to the important dynamic contrasts.
I’m not quite so sure
that the two extracts from the earlier
oratorio, The Light of Life,
work quite as well when divorced from
their context. However, both receive
strong performances here and the solo
tenor in ‘Seek Him that maketh the seven
stars’ acquits himself well. One small
point of detail puzzled me when listening
to this item. The words that the choir
sings are exactly as in my copy of the
Novello vocal score of the oratorio
but the words sung by the tenor soloist
are quite different. I don’t know if
an alternative version exists; perhaps
a Music Web reader can help?
As I indicated earlier,
anyone approaching this CD can be confident
that the performances and recorded sound
are up to the very high standards set
earlier in this series. There are also
good notes and full texts. Not all of
the music is top-drawer Elgar but the
programme still includes much that is
highly enjoyable. Collectors of this
series will need no encouragement from
me to invest in this CD. Those unfamiliar
with Elgar’s smaller-scale choral music
will find this an excellent and inexpensive
introduction.
John Quinn
see also
review by Jonathan Woolf
Choir of St, John’s College, Cambridge/Christopher
Robinson