Remember: 130 Years of Canadian Choral Music Toronto Mendelssohn Choir & Jean Sébastien Vallée

Discover this second album of Henry Aldrich’s Sacred Choral Music, performed by Oriel College Chapel Choir, Oxford, conducted by David Maw, with organists Alexander Pott and Alessandro MacKinnon-Botti, and The Restoration Consort. Priest, architect and composer Henry Aldrich was a key figure in the musical life of 17th century Oxford. This second album of his sacred choral music includes verse and full anthems, choral arrangements, recompositions, and occasional music.

Discover this second album of Henry Aldrich’s Sacred Choral Music, performed by Oriel College Chapel Choir, Oxford, conducted by David Maw, with organists Alexander Pott and Alessandro MacKinnon-Botti, and The Restoration Consort. Priest, architect and composer Henry Aldrich was a key figure in the musical life of 17th century Oxford. This second album of his sacred choral music includes verse and full anthems, choral arrangements, recompositions, and occasional music.

As Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt both adopted the Orthodox faith in the 1970s, Orthodox choral traditions became increasingly prominent in their work, but both composers also looked to the music of the Western church. Schnittke’s Three Sacred Hymns set three prayers, familiar in the West as Ave Maria, the Jesus Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer, and evoke Orthodox chant.

Sounding as glorious as ever under Director of Music Daniel Hyde, the Choir of King’s College celebrates Easter with a wide-ranging and beautifully assembled program recorded in King’s College Chapel.

The choral music of Richard Lambert, born in Bath in the English West Country in 1951, covers a wide range of expression, ranging on this album from straightforward SATB settings for church performance to a sardonic parody of the excesses of established religion. It also encompasses the timeless and the timely, with a number of contributions to the age-old tradition of Christmas music to a cantata inspired by the Covid pandemic.

The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, Academy of Ancient Music, and an outstanding array of soloists join forces to breathe new life into the choral works of Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747). Bononcini was Handel’s main rival in London, and with little to separate the two in terms of public status and reputation, they were dubbed the Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee of London’s music scene in the 1720s.

The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, Academy of Ancient Music, and an outstanding array of soloists join forces to breathe new life into the choral works of Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747). Bononcini was Handel’s main rival in London, and with little to separate the two in terms of public status and reputation, they were dubbed the Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee of London’s music scene in the 1720s.

Philip Stopford is admired in Britain and America for his beautifully crafted music, rooted in the Anglican tradition. His works are memorable and colourful, as these world premiere recordings demonstrate. The biggest piece on this album is the Missa Deus nobiscum, a sacred concert work with a scintillating role for soprano soloist that displays Stopford’s compositional skill, creating a journey rather than a sequence of set piece movements. Elsewhere, in pieces for a variety of locations and occasions, his music is evocative, filmic and vividly celebratory.

We are very pleased to present our first release in a new series from the PaTRAM Institute. The music performed on this recording of Orthodox choral music in the Slavonic language was written by famed Russian composer Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944). Teach me Thy Statutes is performed by the PaTRAM Institute Male Choir, a highly professional group which is a collaboration of Russian and American singers.

The stylistic pluralism which informs so much contemporary choral writing pays rich dividends in the work of Jaakko Mäntyjärvi—a thrilling programme of some exciting, accessible, contemporary music.