Peace I leave with you – Music for the Evening Hour
Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford/Mark Williams
rec. 2022, Chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford
Texts included
Coro Magdalen COR16205 [72]
Coro is the label of The Sixteen but in the past, they have issued discs by other ensembles, most notably the Boston-based Handel and Haydn Society, of which Harry Christophers was Artistic Director from 2009 until 2022. More recently, the label has branched out further: there have been releases of discs by I Fagiolini and now here’s one from the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford. Since this release is specifically badged as ‘Coro Magdalen’ I wonder if this indicates an intended on-going relationship. I hope so.
On this recording the choir includes 17 boy choristers; there are also 13 adult Academical Clerks (4/5/4), among whose ranks the present Informator Choristorum, Mark Williams, has begun to include female altos. Williams has been in post since 2017 and on the evidence of this disc he has done excellent work with the choir, building on the firm foundations laid by such predecessors as Grayston Ives and Bernard Rose.
As the title of the disc suggests, much of the music on this programme is contemplative in nature, though there are the occasional bursts of energy in works such as Wood’s Hail, gladdening Light. However, don’t be misled into thinking that this is a somnolent programme; that’s emphatically not the case. Williams has selected a wide and stimulating collection of pieces and has blended the familiar with the less well-known.
There’s a judicious leavening of music from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries; that’s appropriate since such pieces form the bedrock of the repertoire of choirs such as this. In this category, I particularly enjoyed, both as works and performances, the Tallis and Sheppard pieces. It was an intelligent bit of programming to place John Sheppard’s Libera nos I & II immediately after the item by Grayston Ives because both held the post of Informator Choristorum at Magdalen College. Ives was in post from 1991 to 2009 and his ATB setting of In Pace was one of a number of works that he wrote for the choir. As Mark Williams writes in his booklet notes, Ives’ piece can be heard as “deliberately evoking responsories of the 16th century”. That link is obvious when the music is heard in isolation but is even more readily apparent when followed by the music of Sheppard. The latter led the music at Magdalen College during the 1540s.
The other pieces on the programme are all well done and the music itself is, without exception, worth hearing. I’m just going to pick out a few personal highlights. Roxanna Panufnik’s O Hearken is notable on two counts. One is the quality of the piece itself and the other is the unusual circumstances which caused it to be written. She wrote it in 2015 for the choir of Westminster Abbey in which, at that time, her son was a chorister. Nothing remarkable about that, you may say, except that, as Mark Williams tells us, the commission was offered as a prize in a raffle at the Abbey Choir School’s annual summer fete. Some raffle prize! Another piece with a chorister connection is Andrew Gant’s An Evening Hymn of Sir Thomas Browne (2021). Apparently, Gant’s two sons both sang as choristers with the Magdalen College choir and this piece was first performed by the choir. In it, Gant sets a beautiful prayer by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82). Both words and music are full of evening atmosphere and they inspire the Magdalen choir to give a fine performance. I greatly enjoyed Andrew Gant’s fine book, O Sing unto the Lord. A History of English Church Music (2015), which I received as a Christmas present in the year it was published. I don’t recall hearing any of his music before but this piece impressed me as much as the book did.
I have heard Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux before. It was included on a recent disc by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge (review). I liked it then and I welcomed the chance to experience it again. Incidentally, Kennedy sings as a guest bass on this present disc in the deceptively simple but lovely piece by John Tavener. I was delighted that Mark Williams included Imogen Holst’s A Hymne to Christ. She didn’t compose a great deal of music but everything by her that I’ve heard has impressed me. This particular piece sets poetry by John Donne; it’s a fine miniature. Imogen Holst played an important part in the revival of her father’s Nunc dimittis. This was composed in 1915 for the choir of Westminster Cathedral – hence the Latin text. Inexplicably, the piece then experienced total neglect; it had to wait until the 1974 Aldeburgh Festival for a second performance. Imogen Holst produced a new edition of the setting; it really is far too good to have slumbered unheard for nearly sixty years.
Williams and his choir save the most ambitious piece until last. Parry’s eight-part ‘Lord, let me know mine end’ is the last, finest and most demanding of his masterly Songs of Farewell. Most – though not all – of the performances of these songs that I’ve heard have been by adult SATB choirs but having trebles on the top two lines, with the natural cutting edge of their voices, adds another, welcome dimension. The Magdalen singers do this eloquent piece very well indeed. I like the bite that they bring to the vigorous contrapuntal section (‘Take thy plague away from me’) and the moving music to which Parry sets the last two lines (‘O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength / before I go hence and be no more seen’) is sung with fine feeling and great accomplishment.
I enjoyed this disc very much. The varied musical selection has been assembled discerningly and the choir sings the programme very well indeed. Their singing is nicely disciplined and I appreciated the consistent clarity of textures and diction. In addition, the performances show fine commitment. I hope Coro will issue further recordings by them.
The documentation is good: all the texts are provided and Mark Williams provides useful, succinct notes. The recorded sound is very good; engineer Simon Kiln has recorded the choir clearly and with an excellent balance. The producer was the late James Whitbourn, widely admired as a composer and as a producer both of recordings and broadcasts. This disc is a very good example of the high quality of his production work, which will be greatly missed.
John Quinn
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Contents
Amy Beach (1867-1944)
Peace I leave with you (1891)
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Hear my prayer
Roxanna Panufnik (b.1968)
O Hearken (2015)
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
Behold, thou hast made my days
Joanna Marsh (b.1970)
Evening Prayer
Christopher Tye (c.1505-1573)
Lord, let thy servant now depart
Grayston Ives (b.1948)
In pace (1999)
John Sheppard (c.1515-1585)
Libera nos I & II
Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)
Te lucis ante terminum I & II
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1857-1924)
Eternal Father (1913)
Imogen Holst (1907-1984)
A Hymne to Christ
Andrew Gant (b.1963)
An Evening Hymn of Sir Thomas Browne (2021)
Charles Wood (1866-1926)
Hail, gladdening Light
Piers Connor Kennedy (b.1991)
O nata lux (2014)
William Mundy (c.1529-1591)
O Lord, the maker of all thing
Sir John Tavener (1944-2013)
The Lord’s Prayer (1999)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Nunc dimittis (1915)
Sir Hubert Parry (1848-1918)
Lord, let me know mine end
