Choir of st John's o Holy Night College

Andrew Nethsingha and The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge release the second volume in the highly praised ‘Magnificat’ series, presenting nine settings of the Evening Canticles by celebrated Organist-Composers, written between 1932 and 1952 and non-church musicians from 1974-1989.

The Choir of St John's College, Oxford, directed by David Bannister, sing music associated with Christmas, together with youthful work by Imogen Holst and Benjamin Britten. Looking towards the sixtieth anniversary of Elizabeth Poston's Penguin Book of Carols (1965), initially undertaken with Ralph Vaughan Williams, the recording presents music associated with these two composers and the works they edited, alongside newer pieces exemplifying and revivifying the English carol tradition.

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.

With sympathetic chants by composers spanning a full three hundred years, this programme finds the choir of St John's on top form and offers a masterclass in the genre.

The composers whose music is featured on the present album lived and worked in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, and their fates were afflicted by the monstrous Nazi regime. Viktor Ullmann, who before WWII held the post of Kapellmeister at the New German Theatre, wrote Quartet no.3 while he was detained at the Theresienstadt ghetto-camp. Hans Krása completed the Theme and Variations in 1936, yet he only saw it performed in Theresienstadt, along with his children’s opera Brundibár. Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces reveal his zest for rhythm and dance, as well as his evidently having been inspired by the music of the Viennese salons, Italy and Spain. Pavel Haas’s Quartet no.2, dating from 1925, serves as vivid proof of the claim that the composer was the most gifted pupil of Leoš Janáček.

On this album, the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge performs alongside four soloists and the period instrument ensemble St John’s Sinfonia. The tenor Sam Furness and bass George Humphreys both started their careers as Choral Scholars with this very choir.

The Choir of St George’s Chapel, world famous through its royal patronage, is one of this country’s foremost, participating in daily services throughout the year at its Windsor Castle home. Here the choir performs a wide range of music appropriate to the seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.

Magnificat was recorded to explore the breadth of imagination with which composers have approached the texts, which have been sung in Christian worship for over 1000 years. Stanford’s starting point was the Germanic symphonic tradition; Howells took his inspiration from the architecture and acoustics of the Cathedral in Gloucester; Tippett was inspired by the unique Spanish trumpet stop at St John’s.

Continuing their Magnificat series, and the last album of Andrew Nethsingha’s tenure as director, The Choir of St John’s College Cambridge present Magnificat 4 with works from composers including Judith Weir, Jonathan Dove, Joanna Forbes L’Estrange and Charles Villiers Stanford. The album features two items commissioned specially for St John’s by Judith Weir alongside the world premiere of a new piece by Jonathan Dove.

Not much is known about the English composer John Sheppard. When he was born, and where he grew up, is lost to history but most scholars place his birth at somewhere between 1515 and 1520. This places him in one of the most turbulent periods in English church history, something that can be heard on this disc in the wide stylistic range he used in order to adapt to the quickly changing politics of the day. The sophisticated six part texture of Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria suggests the influence of Queen Mary who encouraged elaborate sacred composition. It is one of Sheppard’s most thrilling and ambitious works.