A Prayer for Deliverance
Tenebrae/Nigel Short
rec. live, 17 July, 2024, Ampleforth Abbey, UK
Texts included
Signum Classics SIGCD880 [81]
Life is full of coincidences. Nigel Short tells us that this album explores “themes of deliverance, forgiveness, comfort and solace in times of particular stress and sorrow”. It seemed to me appropriate, therefore, and not a little poignant, that the disc arrived with me on 8 May, the day on which, in the UK and in many other countries, we were marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the date in 1945 when the Second World War ended in Europe. Then, just two days later, on 10 May, the singer and conductor Matthew Best died at the too-young age of 68. That’s relevant because one of the two centrepieces of Nigel Short’s programme is the Requiem by Herbert Howells. Back in 1983, it was Best and his Corydon Singers who made what I believe was the first recording of Howells’ wonderful work. It was through that fine recording, one of a number of excellent ones that Best and his choir made for Hyperion in the 1980s and 1990s, that I – and countless others, I’m sure – came to know the work. Best’s recording was released long before MusicWeb was “born” in 1995, which will explain why I don’t believe we’ve ever reviewed the disc; but the fact that I and other colleagues have referenced it in reviewing several subsequent recordings of the Howells testifies to its continuing stature.
Before discussing the Howells, though, I should consider the other cornerstone of this programme, A Prayer for Deliverance by Joel Thompson (b. 1988). Indeed, not only does this piece provide the title for the album but it also appears to have been the work which provided the impetus for the programme’s construction. A Prayer for Deliverance is a setting of Psalm 13, the text of which moves from anguished despair at God’s seeming abandonment of the psalmist to a prayer of trust and thankfulness. As he explains in the booklet, Thomson conceived the work in 2020, prompted both by the Covid pandemic and the political turmoil in the US at the time, around the Black Lives Matter movement; as he says of those times, “the darkness was well within reach and the joy was in short supply”. Thompson’s piece is, like everything else on this programme, for unaccompanied choir; in this case, the part writing extends at times to as many as sixteen parts. It’s clear just from listening (I haven’t seen a score) that the music makes formidable demands on the performers, though Tenebrae are, as you’d expect, equal to the manifold challenges. Responding to the words, Thompson’s music is at first dark and troubled; there’s dissonance and anguish in the harmonic language. When he reaches the lines beginning ‘Give light to my eyes, O God’, the pulse of Thompson’s music is slower but, as befits what is a troubled petition, the intensity does not reduce from the level already established in the piece. A sea-change in the psalm comes at the words ‘But I trust in your unfailing love’. I very much admire the way that Thompson prepares musically for this line and then eases into the words in question. Thereafter, there is energy and what I might call determined praise in the music, reaching a climax which is capped by a solo soprano singing top B. The work concludes with a gorgeous, extended ‘Amen’; here, the music is clothed in rich harmonies. In his useful booklet essay, Edward Bhesania describes A Prayer for Deliverance as “a bold, ambitious piece”. I agree. It plays for just 11:47 but Thompson packs an awful lot into this fairly short timespan. This astonishing, inventive and deeply-felt piece receives a virtuoso performance from Tenebrae.
Joel Thompson’s piece was completely new to me. The second pillar of Nigel Short’s programme is much better known – thank goodness – but it wasn’t always so. Howells wrote his Requiem in the 1930s but it remained unheard for some five decades. As Edward Bhesania observes, it used to be thought that Howells wrote the work in reaction to the tragically premature death of his son Michael in 1935 (in the notes accompanying Mathew Best’s 1983 recording, the date of composition is given as 1936). However, Bhesania tells us that more recently it has been established that the work was written three years before Michael’s death. Perhaps the confusion has arisen because Howells incorporated a good deal of material from the Requiem into his great masterpiece, Hymnus Paradisi, a score which definitely was written in response to Michael’s death. It’s a little while since I listened to the Requiem, though Hymnus Paradisi has been much on my mind of late thanks to an excellent recent performance at the Three Choirs Festival (review). I’ve found it fascinating to return to the Requiem and to be reminded how much music – and text – was absorbed into Hymnus Paradisi and there developed. Despite the overlap of words and music it would be wrong to think of the Requiem as a sketch for Hymnus Paradisi: the Requiem is a fine, standalone score, albeit it is much more concise than Hymnus Paradisi, here playing for 19:23. Nonetheless, it is moving to hear how Howells built on the Requiem when memorialising his dead son in Hymnus Paradisi. Thus, for example, the second of the Requiem’s six movements is a setting of Psalm 23. The same text is set in Hymnus Paradisi, and the music, which began life in the Requiem, is significantly expanded. I think the re-working in the later work was wholly beneficial but the way the psalm is set, in a much more concise form, in the Requiem is no less expressive. The third movement, ‘Requiem aeternam I’ was transferred almost in its entirety to the opening of Hymnus Paradisi, where, once again, the musical treatment is greatly expanded. Interestingly, Howells returned to the words of ‘Requiem aeternam I’ for the fifth movement of his Requiem but the music to which he set the words is completely different in ‘Requiem aeternam II’, though there’s a definite kinship between the two movements. The final movement of the Requiem is ‘I heard a voice from heaven’. This same text was set in what, for me, is the most moving section of Hymnus Paradisi and Howells recycled the music, though in the later work he expanded and altered it – and, I believe, his response to the words was even deeper and more eloquent second time round. I like to think of the Howells Requiem as what would today perhaps be termed a ‘prequel’ to Hymnus Paradisi. Taken on its own terms it’s a profoundly moving and satisfying composition and here it receives an exquisite, beautifully shaped performance. I’ll talk about the rest of the programme in a moment but here’s a good place to say that I found that it was wonderful to experience the words and music of William Harris’s sublime Bring Us, O Lord God immediately after the Howells.
Around the twin pillars of the Thompson and Howells pieces Nigel Short has constructed a very thoughtfully curated programme of shorter pieces. These fit together as a coherent, satisfying sequence and everything is performed to the highest possible standard. Holst’s The Evening-watch is exactly 100 years old; the composer himself conducted the first performance at the 1925 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester. The music may date from 1925 but, to be honest, I think anyone hearing it ‘blind’ might think it a much more modern piece. I was delighted to hear again Cecilia McDowall’s Standing as I do before God. I greatly admire her choral music and I think this is perhaps her most moving piece for choir; it’s beautifully sung here, with a fine solo contribution from Emma Walshe, whose voice has crystalline purity. In this piece, the warm, resonant acoustic of the church of Ampleforth Abbey imparts a very pleasing aura to the music. That isn’t the only piece to which the acoustic makes a telling contribution. That’s true also of Tavener’s Song for Athene. I may be wrong but I suspect that the upper voices of Tenebrae were initially positioned at a distance from their colleagues and that those singers gradually moved closer to join the rest of the choir when the piece’s powerful climax was reached; the spatial effect adds a magical touch to the performance.
I can’t recall that I’ve previously heard Francis Pott’s The Souls Of The Righteous Are In The Hand Of God. What a fine piece this is! In his essay, Edward Bhesania rightly references the clarity of the part-writing, which, as he says, references William Byrd, who set the same words, though in Latin. To Bhesania’s comment I’d add that there’s a memorable intensity of harmony and texture in Pott’s writing. Towards the end there’s a truly eloquent tenor solo, cushioned by gentle singing from the rest of the choir; Jeremy Budd sings this solo extremely well.
To close the recital, we hear pieces by William Harris and Joanna Marsh. Purely as a matter of personal taste, I wish Nigel Short had made Harris’s Bring Us, O Lord God the last music in the programme. Not only is it one of the jewels in the English liturgical repertoire but in addition both words and music suit this programme so very well. That said, I can understand why Short elected to leave us with the Joanna Marsh piece. In this setting of words by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) her music is assertive in places, where the text demands it, but the conclusion is suitably tranquil; it’s a very good piece and like everything else on the programme it receives a marvellous performance.
I think I’m right in saying that this disc preserves a live concert given as part of the Ryedale Festival, an annual festival established in North Yorkshire by the pianist, Christopher Glynn. This particular concert was, I believe, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3; the recording was engineered by Radio 3. The recording itself is excellent; the engineers have achieved a fine degree of clarity but at the same time they have used the acoustic of the Abbey church to impart just the right degree of warmth and resonance.
This is an outstanding disc. Much of the repertoire will be familiar but the less well-known pieces – I have in mind particularly those by Francis Pott and Joel Thompson – are well worth your attention. I liked every piece on the programme and I greatly admired the flawless performances by Tenebrae. This is one of the best new choral discs that has come my way for quite some time.
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Contents
Gustav Holst –The Evening-watch, Op. 43 No. 1
Cecilia McDowall – Standing as I do before God
Francis Pott – The Souls Of The Righteous Are In The Hand Of God
Caroline Shaw – and the swallow
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett – A Good-Night
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Rest
Joel Thompson – A Prayer for Deliverance
Sir John Tavener – Song for Athene
Robert Lucas Pearsall – Lay a Garland
Sir Arthur Sullivan – The Long Day Closes
Herbert Howells – Requiem
Sir William Henry Harris – Bring Us, O Lord God
Joanna Marsh – Evening Prayer
