Cambridge Welcome

In a year of Handel celebration and many new recordings, this is a welcome addition to the discography. Stephen Layton, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a stellar group of soloists—in fact, the best in solo Handel singing that this country has to offer—present a disc of three of the Chandos anthems which is sure to achieve the same critical and public acclaim as the recent Dettingen Te Deum from Trinity.

A cluster of choral miniatures culminating in one of Finzi’s most intense, visionary masterpieces: this is some of the most exquisite English choral writing of the last century.

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

Christopher Tye was a close contemporary of Tallis and other composers of the Tudor era. He spent most of his career in the prestigious post of Master of the Choristers and organist of Ely Cathedral. Only a proportion of his works have survived, but among them are motets and two Mass settings. Of all these, his masterpiece is surely the six-voice Missa Euge Bone – recorded on the present disc and by several other ensembles over the past few decades.