Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Choir & Organ

There has been a fair amount of correspondence in the newspapers of late about how ‘elitist’ opera is. Indeed, all classical music is in danger of being tarred with the same brush. But what is meant by ‘elitist’? To those who do not go to the opera – which is probably the most expensive of the classical music genres – the caricature is of extremely wealthy people paying a fortune for tickets. Well, I go fairly regular to the ballet or opera at Covent Garden, and the most expensive ticket I have ever bought cost £68 – usually I pay more in the region of £30 to £40. Yet having researched the price of a ticket for a premier league football match, I find tickets starting at prices way beyond…

The Crossing, directed by Donald Nally, has won its third GRAMMY® Award in the Best Choral Performance category for Born: Music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson [Navona NV6449]. Canadian choral composer Eleanor Daley has been appointed to the Order of Canada. Paul Garrett, director of music at St Anne’s, Great Eccleston, has been made an honorary member of the Royal School of Church Music for his choral recordings during the Covid lockdown. Jack Wilson has been appointed to the new post of master of music at Belfast Cathedral. Karol Mossakowski has been appointed titular organist at Saint-Sulpice, Paris, alongside Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin (titulaire adjointe 1985-2023). Daniel Roth, titular organist since 1985, now takes on the role of titulaire émerité.…

THE ROYAL SCHOOL OF CHURCH MUSIC has announced ‘Sing for the King’, an initiative to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Following the Platinum Project to commemorate the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the RSCM is inviting choirs across the UK, the Commonwealth and beyond to join the coronation celebrations by learning and singing the RSCM Coronation Anthem, The Mountains shall bring peace, commissioned from Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. Taking words from the Psalms 72 and 149, the anthem – which has two versions, one for mixed voices and organ or piano, and the other for unison voices and piano – has been conceived to be sung both by large choirs on formal occasions and smaller choirs in more intimate settings. The accompaniments are interchangeable and those choirs…

TWELVE NEWLY COMMISSIONED WORKS, including five for choir and one for solo organ, will be performed at the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey on 6 May. Iain Farrington will contribute a new work for organ on musical themes from countries across the Commonwealth. The commissioned coronation anthem will be written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other commissioned composers include Paul Mealor, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Master of the King’s Music Judith Weir, and Roderick Williams. Andrew Nethsingha, organist and masters of the choristers at the Abbey, will be overseeing all musical arrangements. The organ will be played by sub-organist Peter Holder and assistant organist Matthew Jorysz. The service will be sung by the Choir of Westminster Abbey and the Choir of His Majesty’s Chapel Royal,…

I was interested to read in Graeme Kay’s Freestyle (March C&O) about the ‘accident’ which led to the renowned first Psalms of David recording by King’s College Choir with David Willcocks. Younger readers may not know that at the time the recording was made – 1969 – King’s College Chapel Choir was actually singing in Trinity College Chapel (this was before the advent of the SATB choir at Trinity) because King’s College Chapel was being restored and the east end controversially altered to accommodate the huge Rubens Adoration of the Magi which had been presented to the college. The King’s organ was also, at the time, being tonally revised by H&H, with additional upperwork (and one 16ft Open Wood rank removed). So the first Psalms of David recording was actually…

Singing Renaissance music raises many questions. Learned journals heave with disputations on performing pitch, on pronunciation, on tempi, temperament and so on. One crucial issue receives scant attention, though: the spatial dimension of being a singer in, say, Tudor England. With William Byrd’s quatercentenary in mind, let us approach this question through his first workplace, Lincoln Cathedral, where he took up residence in 1563. Walking down its nave, like us he would have seen the medieval choir screen. Passing beneath it, he would have seen Treasurer John Welburne’s canopied stalls, already 200 years old in 1563 and still magnificent in 2023. Tiered rows of stalls flanked the north and south sides then as they do now, here as in other cathedrals; later on, we will expect the cathedral choir to…

For almost 70 years Harald Vogel (b.1941) has been on a mission, working tirelessly at shaping and sharing his profound understanding of historical north German organ culture. With countless publications, sound and video recordings, organ restorations and consultation, honours and prizes, and teaching engagements to his credit, his name is synonymous with the organ culture he has pioneered. Now in his 82nd year, and with long-range hindsight, he reflects on the early scene and experiences that made his distinguished career possible. ‘I was, by sheer coincidence, born within cycling distance of historic organs, such as the wonderful Arp Schnitger organ from 169¾ in Grasberg, near Bremen. In the middle of the 1950s I met Franz Lengemann [1926-2000], principally a clavichord builder with connections in the pioneering scene. Among the leaders…

Overwhelmed with today’s plethora of social media platforms? Don’t panic! This guide will help you to grow your business As a musician you probably find yourself busy practising, performing, and studying other musicians to learn from them. However, there is a vital part of our careers that we sometimes leave behind: advertising it. Just as any other business, we want to reach out as much as possible and expand our audiences, which hopefully will result in getting more bookings, selling more copies of our latest musical release, or simply growing our fan base. Of course, artist managers and promoters can take care of this, but we can do a lot of the work by ourselves – for free. Social media involves websites and applications designed to enable users to create/share…

About time,’ one might sigh about Leonarda – a portrait of Isabella Leonarda [Brilliant Classics 96626], a welcome and well-filled disc of representative works from the (mostly) Italian female vocal and instrumental ensemble Cappella Artemisia (pictured below, and named after Artemisia Gentileschi). This 17th-century maestra has waited long for recognition, but here’s a group determined to get her noticed. There’s some fine solo singing (the nine-minute Salve Regina stands out) including the striking voice of their director, Candace Smith. One might cavil about uneven tone and blend in the choir if one forgets that it reflects the mixed-ability of a nuns’ choir, ranging from operatic to novice, fervent and colourfully pleasing to the ear. Charming and sensitive playing throughout from strings and organ – including one of her works that…

Crouch End Festival Chorus (CEFC) has invited conductors aged 18-35 to apply for their 2023-24 young conductor mentoring scheme. The mentoring scheme will cover one programme season with CEFC, starting in Sep 2023 and finishing in Jul 2024. The two successful applicants will have twice monthly mentoring sessions with the CEFC’s music director, David Temple, and have the opportunity to attend choir rehearsals and work with the choir management and accompanist. cefc.org.uk Guildhall School of Music & Drama has announced that the Leverhulme Trust has awarded Research Professor Sir Barry Ife a grant of over £400,000 to undertake a large-scale study of the composer Domenico Scarlatti. Texting Scarlatti: Composition, Reception, Performance will involve the first comprehensive, in depth-study of all 3,200 surviving 18th-century copies of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, tracking their…

Cecilia McDowall: The Ice Is Listening Henley Choral Society/Harker 1 Apr, St Mary’s Parish Church, Henley-on-Thames, UK Howard Skempton: 50 Preludes and Fugues for Organ, Book 2 Matthew Owens (org) 1 Apr, Merton College Chapel, Oxford, UK Sarah Quartel: The Wind Is My Shepherd Canadian Mass Choirs/Hillman 1 Apr, Carnegie Hall, New York, NY, US Howard Goodall: Invictus: A Passion [RP] deChorale/Dinneweth 2 Apr, De Singel, Antwerp, Belgium Jean-Baptiste Robin: La Destruction du Temps Maurice Clement (org) 4 Apr, Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, Paris, France Carson Cooman: Estuary Thomas Sheehan (org) 6 Apr, Washington National Cathedral, Washington DC, US David Loxley-Blount: Central Square Service Choir of St Jude-on-the-Hill/Chalmers 8 Apr, St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, UK Ben Parry: One Long Song NYCGB Choirs, Fellowship Ensemble,…

The titan among America’s organists and church musicians, Frederick Louis Swann, died at his Palm Desert, California home on 13 November. He was 91 years of age. While the inventory of Fred Swann’s triumphs would take many pages, one cannot recall him without acknowledging the exceptional positions he held: director of music at New York’s Riverside Church, the Crystal Cathedral in California, First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, and, at an age when nearly all musicians would have long retired from performing, artist-in-residence at St Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Palm Desert. He taught, variously, at the Manhattan School of Music and California’s University of the Redlands. His colleagues and the public alike accorded him universal esteem, an affection he refunded through his leadership and advocacy and his more than 3,000…

An invitation to an anniversary dinner at my former place of study, Queens’ College, Cambridge, provided no better excuse for a rare pleasure: a term-time weekend chapel-crawl. The term-time bit is important because that’s when chapel musicians are at their busiest, and an early February weekend was no exception. I started on Saturday with Evensong at King’s College Chapel: architecturally, acoustically and musically it is simply one of my favourite places on Earth. On entering, the long reverberation charges the atmosphere with echoes of closing doors and distant choirboy chatter even before the odour of ancient stone and old wood creeps into your airways. Daniel Hyde was in charge of the Choir, Paul Greally was in the organ loft. It was good to see so many young people in the…

I. GRAND-ORGUE C-c4 Jeux de fonds Bourdon 16 Montre 8 Salicional 8 Flûte Harmonique 8 Bourdon 8 Prestant 4 Flûte 4 Jeux de combinaison Doublette 2 Plein-Jeu V-VI Basson 16 Trompette 8 Clairon 4 II. RÉCIT EXPRESSIF C-c4 Flûte Traversière 8 Viole de Gambe 8 Voix Céleste 8 Flûte Octaviante 4 Octavin 2 Trompette Harmonique* 8 Basson-Hautbois 8 Voix Humaine 8 PÉDALE C-g1 Contrebasse 16 Flûte 8 Bombarde 16 Trompette 8 Pédales de Combinaison Tirasse Grand-Orgue Tirasse Récit Combinaisons Grand-Orgue *Appel Jeu d’Anche Récit *Renvoi Jeu d’Anche Récit Expression Récit Copula Récit/Grand-Orgue Trémolo Récit…

MAGDALEN COLLEGE The ground-breaking new instrument by Hermann Eule Orgelbau is unveiled at an Oxford college. KENNETH LEIGHTON A new album of the Scottish composer’s choral works includes the world premiere recordings of several unknown pieces. CROWN JEWELS Ahead of HM The King’s coronation, we explore the music of previous royal services and anticipate what is to come. THE TAVERNER CONSORT As Andrew Parrott’s new book The Pursuit of Musick is released, the early music ensemble celebrates its 50th annniversary. REVISITING THE PAST Dutch organist Pieter van Dijk talks about two new ‘historic’ organs by Flentrop/Potvlieghe and Klop. Plus … The latest international news and previews, specialist reviews, regular columns, and unique readers’ offers.…

Stralsunder Romantik Matthias Pech, Buchholz organ (1841), Nikolaikirche, Stralsund Querstand VKJK2104 [73:10] The north German city of Stralsund is home to a trio of famous historic organs: St Marien (Stellwagen), St Jacobi (Richter, now reconstructed by Wegscheider, its sumptuous case depicted by Arthur Hill) and St Nikolai, with its magnificent Buchholz organ of 1841, restored and largely reconstructed by Wegscheider and Klais in 2006. This excellent recording by Nikolai organist Matthias Pech showcases it as one of the most important German organs of the period prior to Friedrich Ladegast’s crowning achievements. It is rich in splendid, dark choruses, an abundance of 8ft colour and, like Ladegast, has a traditional and expressive winding system. The disc opens with an imposing Prelude & Fugue by A.W. Bach, organ teacher to Mendelssohn, whose…

Harrow School recently celebrated its 450th anniversary. As part of the celebrations Philip Moore was commissioned to write a setting of the Venite (‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord’) for the school’s chapel choir (SATB & org; Encore Publications, £2.95). Those who regret the gradual disappearance of Choral Mattins from the Anglican Church’s regular schedule of services will welcome this fine setting of a text that is an integral part of that office. The organ (manuals and pedal) introduction contains the nuclei of many of the musical ideas that bind the piece together: the interval of a fourth – fourths and fifths are a recurrent feature – and the bold harmonic shifts before the first choral entry. This last determines the agenda for tonality, since Moore’s setting travels…

THE NATIONAL YOUTH CHOIRS OF GREAT BRITAIN (NYCGB) will celebrate 40 years with a concert at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) on 11 April. The theme of the concert will be ‘Celebration and Belonging’, and to that end the organisation has commissioned Ben Parry to write a 40-part work for the occasion. The text is a new bespoke poem, One Long Song, written by actor, singer-songwriter and theatre composer Anoushka Lucas. Lucas told C&O: ‘It’s an honour to have collaborated with Ben on this new piece. I have no prior experience of writing for a choral setting, but when my old friend Ruth Evans contacted me after seeing my play, I found myself really excited at the prospect of merging my theatrical skill set with a new form. Ben and…

An RCO SCOTS workshop will be held in Dundee on 1 Apr on the Hill, Norman & Beard organ at Kingsgait Church. Robert Gower leads a repertoire workshop, with an emphasis on Eastertide; and Andrew Macintosh leads a hymn surgery, providing hints and advice on leading a congregation and troubleshooting difficult hymns to play. The workshop is open to everyone. SCOTS or RCO member £50, general entry £60, and observer tickets £10. bit.ly/RCO_SCOTS-Dundee Platinum Consort hosts a choral workshop led by Scott Inglis-Kidger on 22 Apr at St Mary’s Church, Battersea (10.30am-5pm). ‘Bach Club IX’ features the chorales and choruses from Bach’s cantatas BWV 27-29. The fee is £49. platinumconsort.com/bachclub.html The abcd Intermediate Course continues on 22 and 23 Apr at St Gabriel’s Church, Pimlico, led by Amy Bebbington, Sarah…

PASSIONTIDE AT MERTON 2023 will run from Friday 31 March to Sunday 2 April. The annual festival at Merton College, Oxford, opens with a performance of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas performed on a baroque violin by Bojan Cicic, leader of the Academy of Ancient Music and the ensemble Florilegium (1.15-2.15pm, 31 March). At 7.30pm that evening, The King’s Singers perform works themed around loss and darkness, including Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, and are joined by the Choir of Merton College for a performance of Allegri’s Miserere. Saturday 1 April brings two organ recitals. In the first (2.30-3.30pm), Matthew Owens gives the world premiere of Howard Skempton’s 50 Preludes and Fugues for Organ, Book 2; in the second (5.30-6pm), François Cloete performs Dupré’s Symphonie-Passion. Both recitals will be on the Dobson organ,…

In his Palm Sunday recital at St Albans Cathedral, Richard Gowers (pictured, right) is performing The Lenten Gospels by US composer Nico Muhly. The work has seven movements: Prologue, Ash Wednesday and a movement for the first five Sundays of Lent. Woven throughout the music are small fragments of text written by Andrew Hammond, who was chaplain at King’s College, Cambridge in 2018, when the work was commissioned and where Gowers gave the premiere. Muhly’s score notes explain: ‘The text is designed to inform, in however oblique a way, the organist’s performance. The organ music can begin either dovetailed with the very last sentence of text which precedes it, or after an appropriate silence.’ Gowers remembers, ‘Nico dedicated the piece to both of us, and it felt like a three-way…

CD ARNOLD COOKE: ORGAN MUSIC Tom Winpenny, Harrison & Harrison organ, St Albans Cathedral Toccata Classics TOCC0659 Tom Winpenny has a growing reputation for top-quality recordings of organ works by 20th-century British composers. On this latest release he presents the organ canon of Yorkshire-born Arnold Cooke (1906-2005), who studied with Paul Hindemith. Winpenny gives ‘assured and assertive performances’ (see review, p.65) of music that deserves to be performed more often. Courtesy of Toccata Classics, we have 3 copies to give away; quote code ‘COOKE’. CD BOB CHILCOTT: CANTICLES OF LIGHT NFM Choir, Instrumentalists of the NFM Wrociaw Philharmonic / Agnieszka Franków-Želazny (dir) NFM 81 / Signum SIGCD729 ‘Persuasive advocates for a very powerful piece’ (see review, p.69) The Polish NFM Choir was founded in 2006, and under the direction (until…

International Piano’s March issue examines the life and legacy of piano virtuoso and composer Sergei Rachmaninov, with articles including: • A discography of Rachmaninov the performer• Boris Giltburg champions the composer’s lesser-played concertos• A listener’s guide to the Paganini Variations, exploring the best recordings from the past 10 decades• Sheet music for Rachmaninov’s Piece in D minor Subscribe today to receive your copy Save 20% with code IPR23 magsubscriptions.com/IPR23 +44 (0)1722 716997 subscriptions@markallengroup.com…

I. RUGPOSITIEF C-g3 Prestant 8 Holpijp 8 Quintadeen 8 Octaaf 4 Roerfluit 4 Gemshoorn 2 Quint 1⅓ Sesquialter I-II Mixtuur IV-V Dulciaan 8 Tremulant II. HOOFDWERK C-g3 Prestant 16 Prestant 8 Salicionaal (C) 8 Roerfluit 8 Dwarsfluit 8 Octaaf 4 Blokfluit 4 Quint 2⅔ Octaaf 2 Mixtuur V-VI Cornet (c) V Trompet 16 Trompet 8 Tremulant III. ZWELWERK C-g3 Bourdon 16 Prestant 8 Viola di Gamba (C) 8 Vox Celeste (c) 8 Holfluit 8 Fugara 4 Koppelfluit 4 Nasard 2⅔ Woudfluit 2 Vioolmixtuur III-VII Fagot 16 Hobo 8 Vox Humana 8 Schalmei 4 Tremulant PEDAAL C-f1 Contrabas 16 Subbas 16 Quintbas 10⅔ Octaafbas 8 Violoncel 8 Gedekt 8 Octaaf 4 Bazuin 16 Trompet 8 Usual couplers…

I. NAVE C-g3 Bourdon (from Gt) 16 Large Open Diapason1 (bass in new façade) 8 Claribel Flute² 8 Octave 4 Flûte Harmonique1 4 Tuba1 8 Sub Octave, Unison Off, Octave, Gt to Nave, Sw to Nave II. GREAT C-g3 Bourdon3 16 Open Diapason (bass pipes from Ped Principal) 8 Lieblich Gedact 8 Dulciana (bass pipes from Gt Bourdon) 8 Principal 4 Flute 4 Twelfth 2⅔ Fifteenth 2 Flageolet 2 Seventeenth1 13/5 Mixture3 (19.22.26) III Trumpet 8 Clarinet 8 Tremulant Sub Octave Tuba (from Nave) 8 Nave to Gt, Sw to Gt III. SWELL (ENCLOSED) C-g3 Bourdon 16 Open Diapason 8 Stopped Diapason 8 Keraulophon 8 Voix Celeste 8 Principal 4 Piccolo 2 Mixture3 (15.19.22) III Cornopean1 8 Oboe 8 Clarion1 4 Tremulant Sup Octave, Unison Off, Octave PEDAL C-f1 Acoustic…

Sarcuni: Missa à 5 voci con stromenti, and other works La Hispanoflamenca, Le pavillion de musique / Ann Cnop (vn & dir) Etcetera Records KTC1763 [69:00] Giacomo Sarcuni (1690-?1758) is not a well-known figure in 18th-century Italian music, despite having achieved much as a composer and teacher in Naples. Ann Cnop’s research is truly pioneering and has resulted in this engaging CD of world premiere recordings. The principal work is the Missa à 5, scored for voices and a typically Neapolitan string combination of two violins and basso continuo (i.e. without a viola part). Like the Lutheran Mass, the Neapolitan Mass is confined solely to the Kyrie and Gloria. It is an attractive work, for which Cnop’s forces are well suited. They are even better in Sarcuni’s responsories for Holy…

Carson Cooman: Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Helium Zimbel Press, US$16.95 Frederick Frahm: Collected Works for Organ solo Firehead Organ Works, E-book US$40.00 Sigfrid Karg-Elert (transcr. Graham Barber): Second Sonata for Harmonium Crescendo Music Publication AU$40.00 Carson Cooman’s suite of three pieces (they may be played individually) is stark and striking, making effective use of various types of ostinato and generating thereby an almost hypnotic intensity. The piece requires considerable discipline – crotchet = 40 is not an easy thing to sustain when there is little on the page by which to calibrate pulse – but in sympathetic and committed readings, from a player with the powers of concentration to compel the listener, these pieces will have considerable impact. There’s a lot of gravid silence here, so perhaps something of an acoustic will…