And the Blackbird Sang
Excalibur Voices/Duncan Aspden
Anna Markland (piano)
rec. 2025, St. John the Evangelist, Oxford, UK
EM Records EMRCD094 [70]
The third and last EM Records release to arrive in my inbox for review is an absolute charmer. Somehow, the generally reflective and lyrical mood of the programme seems to suit the time of year with the end of summer giving way to an (early) Autumn. Aficionados of 20th Century British music will know all the composers represented – many very well indeed. So well, that it comes as something of a surprise that a work by Herbert Howells and another by John Ireland can be receiving their first – but very welcome – recordings. Less surprising are premieres accorded to two Edgar Bainton works and a moving five-song cycle by Robin Milford Songs of Escape.
The choir here, the Excalibur Voices under director Duncan Aspden, are giving their commercial debut and in a handful of the songs they are beautifully accompanied by pianist Anna Markland. I rather like the liner biography for Markland that states she “had her ambitions firmly set on becoming an ensemble singer but was careless enough to win the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 1982 on the piano”. Forty and more years on Markland still sings with major professional choral groups and clearly still plays piano with carefree brilliance.
There is no singer list in the liner, but a session photograph suggests a singing strength of the low twenties – so a chamber choir albeit an accomplished one. If push comes to shove I would say their collective sound is not quite as refined or blended as similar groups such as Londinium who offered a similar mixed recital on Somm that I reviewed here – for me a 2018 Recording of the Year. That was one of the finest all-round such collections I have heard so no shame to not quite achieve that level of excellence. Interesting there are several parallels between the two programmes. Three composers (different repertoire) are common to both and both contain powerful responses to the massacre that happened in the Czech town of Lidice by the Nazis in 1942; Alan Bush’s Lidice on the earlier disc and Alan Rawsthorne’s moving A Rose for Lidice here
As I wrote in my earlier review; “Compendium discs are hard to programme effectively. Finding the mix of familiar to tempt the listener in, unfamiliar to lure the dedicated collector and then pull it all together with a coherent ‘theme’ is tricky”. By that measure this new disc succeeds admirably with the mix of repertoire although I cannot discern, and neither does the liner offer, any over-arching theme to the programme. Indeed if there was a small criticism to be laid at this disc it is that there is a certain expressive ‘sameness’ across it that makes for a recital to be enjoyably dipped into rather than listened to as a whole.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Song of Proserpine opens the collection. This is one of 14 of the 21 individual works here written before 1930 (Milford’s five Songs of Escape date from 1935). Certainly Coleridge-Taylor is undergoing a major reassessment as a composer. My opinion, reinforced by this work, is that he had a genuinely prodigious youthful talent but a conservative musical nature. He was untouched by the folksong or Tudor revival (his settings of spirituals are beautiful but hardly exploratory). This brief part-song, written in the last year of his life embodies the skill and limitations of his craft; gratefully written, with lush harmonies that hark back to the late 19th century tradition of Germanic Romantic part-songs. However, it does showcase how well the Excalibur Voices perform and how well they have been recorded in the generous acoustic of St. John the Evangelist Oxford. Placing Herbert Howells’ glorious The Scribe next – the latest work offered here dating from 1957 – perhaps reinforces the impression of Coleridge-Taylor’s innate conservatism.
All three Howells works exhibit a higher degree of individuality and genius. Howells’ legacy is so inextricably linked to his sacred music that it is always a pleasure to hear secular settings. The Scribe was written as an 85th birthday offering to Vaughan Williams. As ever with Howells his harmony has a radiant dissonance that is ravishingly expressive. Excalibur sing with excellent control and security. No surprise that Paul Spicer included this in his Howells collection with the Finzi singers on Chandos and his Birmingham Conservatoire collection “To Music”. Perhaps the Finzis achieve a degree of metrical freedom that this new performance does not but it is still very beautiful. Both Creep afore ye gang [the Howells premiere] and The Shadows are much earlier dating from 1923. Both are dedicated to W.G. Whittaker for his Newcastle Bach Choir. Whittaker was a driving force behind so much top-notch amateur music making between the Wars both as performer, commissioner and editor. Interesting to hear in these works Howells’ choral-writing ‘voice’ to be so clearly defined a good decade before one usually associates his near-total immersion in sung music.
Alan Rawsthorne is a composer I associate far less with this style of unaccompanied choral music. His A Rose for Lidice is a heartfelt gem with Rawsthorne generating a power and genuinely moving impact with a meditation on Love’s ultimate triumph over Hate. A possibly unexpected highlight of this collection is Walford Davies’ Magdalen at Micheal’s Gate. The premise of Henry Kingsley’s poem [all texts are included in EM Record’s handsome booklet] is a blackbird at the gates of heaven pleading for Mary Magdalen to be allowed entry. This work is Anna Markland’s first contribution to the disc – and it is beautifully judged both musically and technically with the piano perfectly balanced. Both choir and keyboard imitate the quiet insistence of the blackbird in a charmingly effective manner. The final verse where “One came and opened Michael’s gate and Magdalen went in” achieves a simple but very effective warmth and radiance that is disarmingly effective. Aside from his enduring hymn tunes and the cantata Everyman, I do not know any of Davies’ choral works – this is of a quality to make me want to hear more. The disc’s title is drawn from this lyric.
Three familiar works by Gustav Holst are included. Two are part of the Six Choral Folksongs that were another Whittaker commission while the lovely This I have done for my True Love was written for Holst’s own church in Thaxted. Hard to imagine this beautiful setting ever causing controversy, but the link between dance and religion was a pagan step too far for the Church in 1916. The inclusion of these Holst settings would seem to tick the “familiar” box that I alluded to before and they are famously beautiful, but the explicit link to folksong singles them out from anything else offered here which again reinforces the sense of individual quality rather than a coherent whole in programming terms. All three of these settings date from 1916 and represent Holst at his finest with the full liberating freshness of folksong inspiring him to create settings that are both respectful of the essentially simple originals but at the same time elevated to a more sophisticated level. Again the Excalibur Voices are sensitively responsive to text and settings.
If Holst’s part-songs are old friends, then it came as something of a surprise to read that Edgar Bainton had written 114 to the words of 80 poets. Perhaps if I was an active member of a choir I would be more aware of that part of Bainton’s work. All three offered here were written before Bainton’s emigration to Australia in 1934. The liner makes the point that many of his settings were used by amateur choirs participating in the Competitive Festival Movement. No surprise then that they are again carefully crafted but designed to show off the range and ability of the choirs. Christ in the Wilderness is a setting of a Robert Graves poem is warmly attractive but perhaps lacking the luminosity that marks Howells. In Youth is Pleasure is likewise warmly harmonised and sounds as if it must a genuine pleasure to sing with the harmony slipping form one rich chord to another. When settings such as this rise to exultant climaxes there are moments when the blend of the Excalibur Voices comes under a slight degree of stress. This is still fine singing but without the absolute equality of tone and balance across pitch and dynamic ranges that the very finest choral groups possess.
Anna Markland returns to accompany the very early (1908) Ireland There is a Garden in Her Face. Given that Ireland was one of the great British solo song writers of the 20th century it is a surprise that he did not write more for choir. All four of the works here date from before 1920 and make for an attractive group and feature the upper voices of the choir. Ireland never embraced the folksong revival and there is a definite sense of the German concept of Gesangverein in the unaffected and unmannered directness of the settings. Again Markland’s contribution is notable for its unfussy yet sensitive support. The Rosetti setting May Flowers dedicated to Thomas Dunhill’s niece who died aged just 12 is a particularly good example of this simple but touching style.
The inclusion of Robin Milford’s Songs of Escape was the main reason I requested this disc for review. Milford is a perfect example of a first rate second tier composer. He might be relatively limited in his range but what he does he does with disarming precision and care. The five settings here concern escaping life through death. This is especially prescient in Milford’s case given that he would take his own life some twenty four years after this set was written. In the 1930’s Milford’s career was on the up, he married, had a beloved son was receiving the professional and personal support of his dearest friend Gerald Finzi and his music was being published and well-received. But clearly there was a trait of depression and doubt in his personality that would allow him to write this set of songs even in the midst of such life-affirming circumstances. For me this set is the highlight of this disc – the music possesses an intensity that I have not heard in Milford’s music before. He draws on the tradition of British part-song writing with skilfully handled intertwining vocal lines creating delicious moments of harmonic tension that relax into lustrous euphony. The setting of Psalm 39 Lord, let me know mine end is more forceful – I have no idea is this is performed in churches but it is a powerful and impressive yet compact work which receives a dynamic and committed performance here. The closing song – a setting of Edmund Spenser’s Port after stormy seas is poignant given the fate that awaited Milford. The last lines read; “Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life doth greatly please”. Milford chooses a hymn-like setting for this touching text and it is performed here with ideal simplicity. If this little jewel of a set – the five songs collectively last less then fifteen minutes – is not still sung today by choirs they should seek it out. Certainly this work is the highlight of the disc for me.
The disc finishes with Holst’s Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is another minor masterpiece and perhaps provides a touching coda to the Milford set with its concluding words; “Sleep I ever, sleep I never, God receive my soul forever” which sinks into a major key certainty that perhaps tragically eluded Milford. So overall a very enjoyable collection. EM Records’ high production values enhance the pleasure with excellent engineering and a booklet full of useful information and interesting pictures of the composers as well as the aforementioned texts in English only.
There is much to enjoy here for those interested in the British chamber choir tradition of the earlier years of the last century.
Nick Barnard
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Contents
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Song of Proserpine (1912)
Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
The Scribe (1957)
Creep afore ye gang (1923)
The Shadows (1923)
Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971)
A Rose for Lidice (1956)
Henry Walford Davies (1869-1941)
Magdalen At Michael’s Gate (1913)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
This Have I Done for My True Love, Op.34 No.1, H.128 (1916)
Edgar Bainton (1880-1956)
In the Wilderness (1922)
Abou Ben Adhem (1919)
In Youth Is Pleasure (1929)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
6 Choral Folk Songs, Op.36b, H.136: No.5, I Love My Love (1916)
John Ireland (1879-1962)
There Is a Garden in Her Face (Version for Choir & Piano) (1908)
May Flowers (Version for Choir & Piano) (1919)
In Summer Woods (Version for Choir & Piano) (1911)
Evening Song (1912)
Robin Milford (1903-1959)
Songs of Escape (1935)
No.1 Hear, O God
No.2 Helen of Kirconell
No.3 The Spring of the Year
No.4 Lord Let Me Know Mine End
No.5 Port After Stormy Seas
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
6 Choral Folk Songs, Op.36b, H.136: No.3, Matthew, Mark, Luke & John (1916)
