Hilding Rosenberg The Revelation of St John (symphony No. 4)

The second release in our Magnificat series features nine settings of the Evening Canticles, sung daily at Evensong. The recording features Howells Collegium Regale and Julian Anderson's St John's Service, as well as settings by Berkeley, Jackson, Pärt, Sumsion, Swayne, Walton & Watson.

If there is one Mendelssohn symphonic recording that makes the case for a more favorable reassessment [of the composer], it's this pairing of the Italian Symphony and some of the Midsummer Night's Dream music by Sir Charles Mackerras…. The clarity of texture here [in the Symphony] is extraordinary, even when the brass and winds add their clout. As a result, every line of Mendelssohn's orchestration comes through clearly, leaving a listener with a renewed respect for this composer's inventiveness…. The Midsummer Night's Dream music is even more miraculous….

Following their critically acclaimed ‘Psalms’ album, St John’s College, Cambridge and Andrew Nethsingha present a selection of Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis recordings from January and July 2022. Much of the third volume in their series of Evening Canticles focuses on music in a twenty-year period, from 1945 to 1965. Philip Moore’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were commissioned especially for St John’s College, Cambridge.

Following from Ash Wednesday, this album is the second live Evensong album from the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge and marks the next great season of the Church’s Year, Eastertide. This cele- bration of Jesus’s resurrection also initially spans forty days, taking us up to Ascension Day, and culmi- nates on the fiftieth day with the Feast of Pentecost. Where the previous album reflected the tradition of using no organ from Ash Wednesday until the Gloria of the Easter Vigil, the instrument is fully utilised here by the Chapel’s organ scholars Glen Dempsey and James Anderson Besant.

Allegri's early Baroque masterpiece Miserere from around 1630 movingly juxtaposes modal chant with tonality, and was so popular that the Vatican refused to allow it to be performed anywhere else - until the 14 year old Mozart broke the Vatican's monopoly by writing it down from memory after attending a performance. Pergolesi's late Baroque masterpiece Stabat Mater for soprano and alto dates from 1736, the year of his death at the age of 26. It was originally written for male voices but since it's hard to find a castrato these days, it's generally performed by two women or by a female soprano and counter-tenor. This performance uses a female alto but in other respects it's very much a period performance - the sound is intimate and the tempos are lively without any sacrifice of spiritual depth.