Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i Choir & Organ

EDITOR’S LETTER Opportunity knocks One of the most inspiring aspects of today’s musical life is how much it is opening up for others to become involved in, and experience the joy of, music-making. In this issue alone we read about Tenebrae’s work with schools in the socially and culturally diverse London Borough of Ealing (see News, p.9), offering children an insight into what music can give on a personal level as well as helping to upskill teachers and give them more confidence. Similarly, Oxford Bach Choir (see feature, p.15) recently launched its schools education programme, which will result in children performing together with the choir in concert. And aimed at the young adult, the London Oriana Choir’s new Choral Scholarship Programme (see News, p.10) is giving singers aged 18-25 the…

APPOINTMENTS & AWARDS Quentin du Verdier has won the baroque organ category of the 13th Toulouse International Organ Competition. The symphonic organ category and the audience prize was won by Gabriele Agrimonti; and Adam Tabajdi took the honours for the 20th-century organ category and the associated audience prize. toulouse-les-orgues.org Christopher Too, organ scholar at Jesus College, Cambridge, is to be Salisbury Cathedral’s organ scholar from September 2022. Gregory Batsleer is to replace Samir Savant as the new director of the London Handel Festival. At the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the Dunedin Consort won the Ensemble Award; Bristol Choral Society and conductor Hilary Campbell took the new Inspiration Award (receiving 4,667 public votes); and the Series and Events Award went to the Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia for its ‘The World…

PAST LIVES HANS HASELBÖCK (1928-2021) The Austrian organist, composer, author and academic teacher Hans Haselböck died on 20 October. Born in Lower Austria, Haselböck entered the University of Vienna in 1947 to study organ and church music. He was a brilliant improviser, and won the international competition in Haarlem three times between 1958 and 1960. In 1949, while still a student, he became organist at the city’s Dominican Church; he was to hold the post for 65 years, alongside his other work as professor of organ and improvisation at Vienna’s Musikhochschule. The Second Vatican Council took place in 1962-65 and made its impression on Haselböck. Among the Council’s decisions was that the Mass should be conducted in the vernacular instead of Latin, and Haselböck became a pioneer in church music…

NEWS & PREVIEWS CHRISTMAS CHARITY CONCERT ROUND-UP JUSTIN HARRIS CHRISTMAS CHARITY CONCERTS once again come to the fore in early to mid-December, with venues and musicians joining forces to raise money for an abundance of notable causes. Great Ormond Street Hospital are holding their 22nd Christmas carol concert at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge (14 Dec); money raised will be specifically directed to children’s cancer care. Raising money for Childline, NSPCC’s ‘Merry Little Christmas’ concert at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square (9 Dec) is a hybrid event with both in-person and online attendance options. The children’s hospice charity Demelza’s celebration of Christmas will be held in Canterbury Cathedral (20 Dec). Hertfordshire Chorus will lead the singing in the carol concert of the Willow charity, which works with seriously ill young adults; readings will…

READERS’ OFFERS Your chance to WIN CDs and sheet music CD JOSQUIN’S LEGACY The Gesualdo Six Hyperion CDA 68379 ‘Great clarity of ensemble, finely judged tempi, dynamics and deep expression’ (see review, p.70) Of the many albums marking the 500th anniversary of the death of this most influential composer, this ‘excellent’ one by The Gesualdo Six turns the spotlight on to the rich cultural centre of Ferrara in Italy, and the music written by Low Country composers who gathered there, including Ockeghem, Brumel, Mouton, Willaert, and L’Héritier. Courtesy of Hyperion Records, we have 5 copies to give away; quote code ‘JOSQUIN’. CD IMAGES Anna Lapwood, Harrison & Harrison organ (1908), Ely Cathedral Signum Classics SIGCD 688 ‘An impeccably crafted programme’ (see review, p.65) If you’re beginning to ask yourself whether…

Freestyle When I got fired; Tom Bell freaks out; meeting Widor BY GRAEME KAY ROB SHIRET John Scott lore… A former chorister at St John’s College, Cambridge (now an eminent organ builder) during the George Guest era, when John was the organ scholar, tells me that after his voice broke, he would be assigned to the organ loft to turn pages. ‘John had this unnerving habit of registering the next piece with one knee on the setter piston while simultaneously accompanying the psalm on the Positive…’ he recalls. If any reader has (printable and authenticated) stories of derring-do or disaster in the organ loft to share, email me at graeme.kay@bbc.co.uk. I’ve written before about battling the tuba and octave couplers on the four-manual Rushworth & Dreaper at the Church of…

REVIEWS KEYBOARD CDS Giovanni Picchi: Complete Harpsichord Music and Other Venetian Gems Simone Stella Brilliant Classics 95998 [73:55] This programme presents some less well-known Venetian composers from the late 16th into early 17th centuries, in which Simone Stella plays a fine harpsichord after Grimaldi, ideal for this music, and tuned in meantone. The opening Toccata by Picchi from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book neatly illustrates the dissemination of this music across Europe, and the stylish and virtuosic playing of Stella. Dance music of the period is nicely represented in Picchi’s Intavolatura di Balli D’arpicordo, and other less well-known music includes an impressive Toccata by Bellavere, who was the successor to Andrea Gabrieli at San Marco. Music by both Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli is also included to make an enjoyable and historically…

Berlioz: Requiem – Grande messe des morts Javier Camarena (t), Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Concertgebouworkest / Antonio Pappano (dir) RCO 19006 [83:41] This live recording was made in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in May 2019 and exploits the beautiful acoustics of that famous building. Antonio Pappano’s operatic experience is legendary and he uses it here to extract every ounce of the drama inherent in Berlioz’s famous Requiem. By turns tender, lamenting and awe-inspiring, Pappano has a hotline to Berlioz’s intentions and the results are thrilling, not least in the Dies irae with its multiple brass groups. Particularly impressive are the Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, who are unflinching in their commitment and beauty of sound. With Javier Camarena’s first-rate contribution, this is a recording…

REVIEWS ORGAN MUSIC Vernon Hoyle: In memoriam Vernon Hoyle: Sortie héroïque Banks Music Publications, £3.50 each Francis Jackson: Fanfare in B flat; The Goss-Radley Fanfare Banks Music Publications, £6.50 Tim Knight: Short Organ Pieces, set 3 Tim Knight Music, £7.95 Ian Tracey: Organ Encores, vol.6 Church Organ World Publications, £20.00 Vernon Hoyle contributes two unassuming but nonetheless neatly written pieces of divergent mood. In memoriam, dedicated to a childhood friend who died at a tragically young age in 1966, is a fluid and expressive miniature in something like ternary form, two minor mode sections enclosing a thematically related central section in the major; a recurring chromatic bass figure provides harmonic impetus. The whole thing has an air of restrained regret and nostalgia which is quite affecting, and there are some…

REVIEWS BOOKS Giving Voice to my Music: Choral composers in conversation with David Wordsworth David Wordsworth Kahn & Averill ISBN 978-0-9957575-5-5, p/b, 326pp, illus, £25.00 A frustration when interviewing musicians for magazine articles with their specific word limits is that the conversation has to be tightly focused; unexpected avenues have to be left unexplored and fascinating anecdotes often have to be condensed or omitted. The best thing about this collection of exchanges between David Wordsworth and 24 composers whose work includes a lot of choral music is its freedom from such constraints. Trains of thought are allowed to develop, references explained, questions are clarified or followed up, random memories that are triggered by a discussion can be included. The conversations originated as a lockdown project for the members of Wordsworth’s…

IN BRIEF Corrections In the Nov 2021 issue, p.15: Errollyn Wallen’s Only (2018) takes its inspiration from gospel music, not the evils of the slave trade. On p.59: Piero Ruffatti ceased being a vice-president of the International Society of Organbuilders in 2002. We apologise for the errors. Among the works shortlisted in the Vocal/Choral category of the 2022 Ivors Composer Awards are Howard Goodall’s Never to Forget (for SATB choir and small orchestra) and Vidi Aquam by James MacMillan (for 40 unaccompanied voices, split into eight SSATB choirs). The winners will be announced on 8 Dec during a ceremony at the British Museum, London. A former chorister and lay vicar is to be honoured with a stone effigy of his head on the 14th-century ceiling of Exeter Cathedral. Gordon Pike…

CELEBRITY VISIT BLUE COAT SCHOOL ON A VISIT TO LIVERPOOL BLUE COAT SCHOOL, accomplished organist Lady Anne Dodd, widow of comedian Sir Ken Dodd, met the school’s organ scholars George Ke and Olivia Stone, both 15 years old. Sir Andrew Parmley, chief executive of the Royal College of Organists, awarded its Accreditation to headteacher Scilla Yates for the new Blue Coat School Organ Scholarship. Entirely funded by outside sources, the scholarship project was represented by Prof. Peter Toyne, founder vice chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, and two key sponsors, Liverpool businessman Keith Simpson and Dr Jude Brereton. The state school’s recognition by the RCO was part of a project led by tutors Lee Ward and Daniel Greenway, supervisor Dr Chris McElroy and Blue Coat director of music Simon Emery.…

RECITAL ROUND-UP IN SEARCH OF MESSIAEN Southwell Minster’s annual devotional performance of Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur returns on Sunday 19 December, after a year’s hiatus due to the pandemic. It will be performed by assistant director of music Jonathan Allsopp, who told C&O: ‘La Nativité is one of those pieces you always discover something new whenever you come back to it. It’s the perfect piece for an evening’s contemplation in the busy run-up to Christmas, and having not played it last year, I’m raring to get it out once again! As a work, I think its substance lies in how it covers such a large gamut of the Christmas story, both in obvious ways like the movements about well-known aspects like the Magi and the Shepherds, but also in…

BERLIN: 1 The voice of Berlin Henry Fairs opens his overview of organs in the German capital with a new instrument by Kristian Wegscheider in the borough of Pankow part 1 A new organ in the style of Buchholz Berlin is not a city at all, but merely a place where many, including a great number of ‘Berlin enlightened people who are indifferent to the place, gather.’ So wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in 1828, and it is quoted by Uwe Pape in the foreword to his book Orgeln in Berlin (Pape Verlag, 2003). There may still be something to Heine’s quote, and Pape’s observations that ‘Berlin is a city that has gained much from immigration … in which ancient and modern often stand, seemingly unrelated, side by side’…

T.C. LEWIS Lewis at the Laidlaw An unaltered 1868 T.C. Lewis organ has found a new home in a state-of-the-art music centre in St Andrews. Chris Bragg tells the story. PHOTOS BY CHRIS BRAGG There’s a salient, though hardly unusual, tale told by the respective organ histories of St Andrews and nearby Dundee. In the ‘Auld Grey Toon’, money was in plentiful supply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to furnish the ecclesiastical foundations of both town and gown with fine instruments by Father Willis, Henry Willis II, Forster and Andrews and others. In the 20th century, with money still plentiful, the organs were, without exception, spoiled in predictable ways. The only organ of any age to survive unaltered is the modest pneumatic Hill, Norman & Beard (1923)…

CHORAL CDS Cantigas de Santa Maria Scandicus CD Accord ACD 285 Manuel Cardoso: Complete Masses vol.1 Choir of the Carmelite Priory/Lloyd Toccata Classics TOCC 0498 Cohen’s Carols Oxford Camerata/Cohen Chronos ICSM 017 Joseph Haydn: Great Choral Works Various artists Hänssler Classic HC 21054 Giovanni Legrenzi: Harmonia d’affetti devoti op.3 Nova Ars Cantandi Naxos 8.579123-124 On the Road to Bethlehem The Choir of St Mary-le-Tower/Borrett Paul Baxter DCD 34720 Petros Petridis: Requiem for the Emperor Constantine Palaiologos Various artists Naxos 8.574354-55 Vidimus Gloriam Eius Luceat Choir/Fellows Hymnus HYMCD 102 Vienna Boys Choir – Together Vienna Boys Choir/Various Deutsche Grammophon UPC 4856238 KEYBOARD CDS The Anton Bruckner Project: Symphonies vol.2 (Organ Transcriptions) Hansjörg Albrecht, Henry Willis III organ (1932), Westminster Cathedral Oehms OC 478 J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue Margaret Phillips,…

Philip Moore: Organ Works Stephen Farr, Harrison & Harrison organ (1962), St Albans Cathedral Resonus RES 10284 [78:03] Since his retirement from York Minster in 2008, Philip Moore has been able to devote more time to composition. An album of Moore’s organ music was overdue, and full marks to Stephen Farr and the Resonus team for bringing this about. The earliest works from the 1980s include the vibrant Sonata for Organ. At the other end of the disc we have the four-movement Sinfonietta, also brimming with energy but, composed two decades later, tightly constructed using serial technique. Lyrical and bold in equal measure, Moore’s music always leaves you feeling uplifted, and Farr is to be applauded for getting to the heart of the vitality in this fine music. RUPERT GOUGH…

REVIEWS Christmas selection Brian Morton takes his pick of the finest festive fare It’s the season when we huddle together, sometimes for good cheer, sometimes simply to shut out – for a day or two – the rough year that has passed. It’s hard to imagine what the first Christmases were like for the Plymouth Colony, in what is now Massachusetts, founded 400 years ago. We associate the Pilgrim Fathers with Thanksgiving, of course, but some of the first music heard in the American colonies was Christmas hymns, and around such an anniversary it’s good to be reminded what a colonial Christmas might have sounded like. The Musical Heritage Society has put out a set of American Colonial Christmas Music [MHS 1126] performed with attractive plainness by the Berkeley Chamber…

REVIEWS MUSIC FOR YOUNG VOICES An SATB tribute to RVW, a reflection on when love dies, Old Saxon potions, and a lyrical upper-voice anthem Many conductors will be planning to include music by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 2022 to celebrate the 150th anniversary year of his birth. However, Sarah Cattley’s O Western Wind… An anniversary (SATB unacc; Stainer & Bell ISMN 979-0-2202-2765-3, print £2.00, digital download with a single or 30-copy print licence, £2.00-£20.00), especially commissioned by Stainer & Bell as part of their RVW150 celebrations, represents a really refreshing twist for possible repertoire choice beyond the actual music of RVW. It will also be a distinctive choice for youth or adult choirs keen to include new voices in their programming. The young, award-winning composer Sarah Cattley uses a poem…

A CAROL FOR KING’S THE COMMISSIONED CAROL FOR THE 2021 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, is a setting by Cecilia McDowall of There is no rose. King’s College’s director of music, Daniel Hyde, asked McDowall to write something that would bring a moment of stillness in the service, giving her freedom to choose her own text. McDowall told C&O: ‘It’s always an engaging process, selecting what I hope will be just the right text for a new commission. For this carol I looked for words which would help me express a feeling of intimacy and quiet joy, a text which could lend itself to a slower tempo, nothing too animated. I have always loved the medieval poem There is no rose, and after looking through…

NEWS & PREVIEWS FORTHCOMING EVENTS December webinar ‘Vocal Care and Health through the Winter Concert Season’ 11 Dec As choirs return to live rehearsals and concerts, abcd’s webinar series continues with Charles MacDougall focusing on vocal health and warm up exercises and techniques. There will be a particular focus on looking after voices through the winter period. Webinars take place on Saturdays from 11am-12.30pm (unless otherwise advertised) and are hosted on Zoom. There is a fee of £5 for each webinar. All abcd webinars are recorded and a copy sent to everyone who books, so you can watch live or on catch up at your convenience. Future events Singing workshop day with Bob Chilcott 26 Feb 2022, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester abcd’s annual north-west singing day returns, with Bob Chilcott leading…

PREMIERES [RP = REGIONAL PREMIERE] Lydia Gardiner: A Ceremony of Carols Sonus Angelorum/Nolan 2 Dec, St George’s Cathedral, Perth, Australia John Rutter: Carol (title tbc) Choir of Merton College, Oxford/Nicholas 2 Dec, Merton College Chapel, Oxford, UK James Whitbourn: Our Gold Choir of Peterhouse College, Cambridge/Jackson 2 Dec, Little St Mary’s, Cambridge, UK Scott Flanigan, Deirdre Gribbin, Philip Hammond, Linley Hamilton, Piers Hellawell, Ruth McGinley, Michael McHale, Una Monaghan, Matthew Owens, and Steve Scullion: Portico Preludes Simon Johnson (org) 4 Dec, Portico of Ards, Portaferry, Co. Down, UK David Bednall: Two Advent Antiphons Sherborne Chamber Choir/Ellis 4 Dec, Sherborne Abbey, Sherborne, UK Seán Doherty: Anlatamıyorum (I Can’t Tell) Turkish National Choir/Erdem 4 Dec, Historical Symphony Hall, Ankara, Turkey Bob Chilcott: The Sleeping Child VOCES8 4 Dec, LIVE from London Christmas…

DANIEL HYDE David Hill In conversation with … Daniel Hyde Director of music, King’s College, Cambridge David: Palestrina or Victoria? Daniel: It’s a close call, but I think it’s Victoria. We all grew up with Palestrina, particularly in the context of writing academic music. But there is something more fluid about Victoria – I don’t know whether it’s the Spanish element, but there’s something that just slots together more easily. And I find that children take to it more readily, such as to some of the Masses not commonly sung – the six- and eight-part settings are more interesting. David: Mozart or Haydn? Daniel: A draw! – I think Haydn was more conscious of making sure every note mattered. David: A good answer! Daniel: Would you agree? David: I would…

REVIEWS CHORAL CDS Ghosts Songs: Contemporary Music and Words from Ireland Marina Carr, Dairena Ni Chinnéide, Carl Corcoran, Paula Meehan (readers), Laetare Vocal Ensemble / Róisín Blunnie (dir) Métier MSV 28599 [56:40] There ought to be more recordings like this. The art of setting words and delivering them musically is widely discussed, but the words as a starting point are often left behind. Here three contemporary Irish poets, with the earlier Lola Ridge and W.B. Yeats read by broadcaster Carl Corcoran, are given the opportunity to present their work in isolation, cadenced as written rather than as they are then sung. It makes for fascinating listening and far from generating any tension between the written and the sung form, the juxtaposition illuminates both. Laetare are expert at this kind of…

REVIEWS EARLY MUSIC Rebecca Tavener rounds up the latest releases As 2021 draws to a close, one composer anniversary has resonated with particular energy. We’ve had Sweelinck, Praetorius and Fayrfax this year – wonderful composers all – but Josquin des Prez continues justly to obsess. One excellent new recording (2022 is going to bring more, by the way) comes from The Gesualdo Six with Josquin’s Legacy [Hyperion CDA 68379]. The legacy this fine male consort explores is the influence of Josquin in Ferrara, an influence belied by the short period of his work there for Duke Ercole I d’Este. Alongside Josquin, here are works by the oltremontani (composers from the Low Countries), drawn to the rich cultural centre of Ferrara: Ockeghem, Compère, Brumel, Févin, Mouton, Willaert, Isaac, L’Héritier et al.…