The Choir of Jesus College Cambridge, Mark Williams Journey Into Light Music For Advent

Bill Ives has enjoyed a rich and varied career as both performer and composer (Grayston Ives). These experiences, culminating in nearly two decades as Informator Choristarum (Director of Music) at Magdalen College, Oxford, are reflected in a compositional style which is complex yet accessible, rich and colourful. His choral music comes from the heart, and this deeply personal reaction to the texts enables the performer or listener to engage with and enjoy the music to its full extent.

A programme spanning the variety and sheer emotional range of Stanford’s Anglican choral music (with a notable contribution from Owain Park in the Fantasia and Toccata for organ). You are unlikely to hear quite so stirring a rendition of ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’ for some time to come…

Exciting accounts of eight anthems spanning nearly two hundred years, with a welcome emphasis firmly on recent works.

Several generations of Bachs have been gathered by Richard Marlow and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge for their programme of motets. All of them have been recorded at various times in the past but many only infrequently, and one or two, perhaps, now make their first appearance on CD. There is no dull music here and two of the pieces, at least, are of outstanding expressive beauty. The earlier of these is Johann Bach’s profoundly affecting Unser Leben ist ein Schatten (“Our life is but a shadow”). This member of the clan survived both the Black Death and the savage bombardment of Erfurt during the Thirty Years War.