O Maria, virgo pia
Grace Davidson (soprano), Craig Ogden (guitar), Tippett Quartet, Alexander Pott (organ)
Choir of Oriel College Oxford / David Maw
rec. 2025, Keble College Chapel, Oxford, UK
Texts and translations included
Convivium Records CR117 [72]

Oriel College was founded in 1326 as ‘the House of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Oxford’. 700 years on, anniversary celebrations are being inaugurated with the release of this new recording by its Choir, framed by two settings of the Marian sequence which give the album its title. The anonymous 13^th century rendering is sung here with freshness and vigour, the female and male voices alternating the paired strophes before joining in the concluding hymn of praise. It makes an attractive introduction to the album and the sound of the choir as well as to Judith Bingham’s Oriel Service which comes next. Bingham used the medieval sequence as a point of departure for the Magnificat, mystical and reflective, performed here by the Choir with a real sense of awe, a sentiment which is naturally carried across to the Nunc dimittis, where Alexander Pott’s beautifully judged organ accompaniment effectively affirms the sense of profound spirituality Bingham’s music conveys. The Magnificat was commissioned in 2015 to celebrate 30 years since the admission of female students to Oriel and, with a lovely sense of continuity, Cheryl Frances-Hoad returned to the O Maria sequence as her inspiration for the anthem which ends the recital, commissioned in 2025 to celebrate 40 years of female students. It’s a striking piece, retaining the energy and joy of the ‘original’, somehow looking forward and back, performed with obvious relish.

There are other enjoyable connections to be found in the recital, which has been very well planned by the Choir’s Director, David Maw. Most significantly, music and words by alumni of the college. Edmund Fellowes is described by Maw in his booklet notes as ‘Oriel’s most eminent musical protégé’. A gifted musician and musicologist, Fellowes read Theology at Oriel and after ordination submitted for the Oxford Bachelor of Music degree with his cantata, Hymn of the Third Choir. The work is scored for chorus, soprano, vocal quartet and strings using words from Newman’s The Dream of Gerontius, five years before Elgar’s larger scale setting of nearly the complete poem. Fellowes’s composition is a revelation, a micro-oratorio. Framed at its start and end by ‘Praise to the holiest’, the middle sections are wonderfully contrasted. The first, sees the soprano solo—the luminous Grace Davidson—supported by the luxuriously cast Tippett Quartet in ‘The angels as beseemingly’. Then comes an a cappella setting of ‘But to the younger race’, sung with real grace and fervour by the Choir. The concluding ‘Praise to the holiest’ is a fugue. Fellowes might have had to show his skill in the genre because of his academic ambitions, but it absolutely works in practical terms as a grand concluding chorus. We also get to hear Fellowes‘s setting of the Benedictus later in the recital from his service in D. It’s pleasing to the ear and well sung here, but doesn’t make the same impression as the Cantata, perhaps the composer feeling slightly constrained by the liturgical context.

Newman features too in James Whitbourn’s Solitude. Whitbourn had the inspired notion of using a solitary guitar to accompany the Choir’s singing of Newman’s poem, reflecting on ‘the magic power’ found in stillness. Craig Ogden’s plays exquisitely, his lines tracing what sounds like a fitfully lit path through the Choir’s words.

Both David Briggs and John Caldwell were attracted to John Keble’s translation of the Greek hymn Phos hilaron—Hail, gladdening light. Their settings make a fine ‘compare and contrast’ exercise. Both reflect the inherent warmth of the words, with the Briggs setting sounding especially satisfying from a singer’s perspective, whilst Caldwell is more overtly harmonically experimental, fascinatingly different.

Other delights: Mark R Taylor’s vivid rendering of Clough, Say not the struggle nought availeth; Alumnus Herbert Chappell’s imaginative Psalm 150 replete with rhetorical flourishes; Philip Cooke’s dramatic and colourful The Glory of Zion; a formally ingenious setting of Verbum caro by Hugh Collins Rice’s (Lecturer in Music at Oriel); and last, but very much not least, two of David Maw’s own compositions. He gives us an original take on the carol I sing of a maiden, in which William Anderson’s fetching tenor solo and the Tippett Quartet provide significant and inventive additions to the choral texture. His Magnificat has an immediate impact on the ear with Grace Davidson’s compellingly melismatic singing first in antiphonal dialogue with the choir, whose parts have a thrilling urgency, then gloriously over them when the Gloria Patri… is reached.

Maw concludes his notes by saying that music has a more prominent place at Oriel than at any previous time in its history, a point underlined by this engrossing, classy recording. I hope we’ll hear more soon. Whilst not hitherto enjoying the attention given to its adjacent neighbours Christchurch and, latterly, Merton, there is abundant evidence here to suggest Oriel should be considered in the same league.  

Dominic Hartley

Contents
Anon (13th-c) O Maria, virgo pia
Judith Bingham Oriel Service
David Maw
I sing of a maiden
Magnificat
David Briggs Hail, gladdening light
Edmund Fellowes
Hymn of the Third Choir
Benedictus
James Whitbourn Solitude
Mark R. Taylor Say not the struggle naught availeth
John Caldwell Phos hilaron
Herbert Chappell Psalm 150
Phillip Cooke The Glory of Zion
Hugh Collins Rice Verbum caro
Edmund Fellowes Benedictus
Cheryl Frances-Hoad O Maria, virgo pia