The Queen

Following Tom Lehrer’s decision in 2020 to release almost 100 of his songs into the public domain (for anyone to perform and adapt without permission), The Queen’s Six find themselves unable to resist… 'Lehrer […] has just announced that he is surrendering the rights to his songs so that everyone can help themselves to his ‘catchy and savage musical satire’ without fear of breaching copyright. His timing, as ever, is perfect, because what the world needs urgently is a strong dose of Lehrer.'

VA: A Garland for the Queen / Benjamin Britten: A.M.D.G / Sacred And Profane
Cambridge University Chamber Choir / Timothy Brown
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 232 MB | Full Artwork: 53 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Gamut Classics # GAMCD 529 | Country/Year: UK 1991
Genre: Classical | Style: Vocal, Sacred, Secular, Early 20th Century, Contemporary

Cambridge University Chamber Choir performs three twentieth-century English song cycles for mixed choir, including the rarely-recorded A Garland for the Queen. A Garland was composed to commemorate the Queen’s coronation in 1953 by a selection of the finest English composers including Finzi, Bliss, Bax, Tippett, Vaughan Williams, Howells and Ireland. The two works by Benjamin Britten, AMDG and Sacred and Profane, are virtuoso show pieces for mixed choir.

This disc contains two works that have been newly recorded. And they are strange works indeed. During the late 1930s Prokofiev wrote three pieces based on works of Pushkin – incidental music for a production of Pushkin's play, Boris Godunov; incidental music for a stage production of his Eugene Onegin; and music for The Queen of Spades. The latter was never finished and never produced, largely because of a change in attitudes from Stalin's government about what art works should focus on. As for the 1950 oratorio 'On Guard for Peace', the less said the better. This is one of those god-awful patriotic oratorios that Stalin's apparatchiks ordered by the yard from the country's composers. This one extols Stalin and the Soviet state, and recalls the sacrifices of WWII. History notes and lyrics in Russian and English can be found in the booklet.