Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea
William Vann director
ALBION RECORDS ALBCD 063
From the inexhaustible well of Christmas fare, here is welcome refreshment for the most sated. Although crowned by a fine rendering of Vaughan Williams’ familiar Fantasia on Christmas Carols, the importance of this issue lies elsewhere.
Its auspicious opening is the quietly glorious Christmas now is drawing near at hand, which has been languishing for far too long among RVW’s Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire, and it is to be hoped that the revitalised regime now obtaining at King’s might be persuaded to investigate. From his Hodie, we have No sad thought, and also The blessed Son of God, the same words being set in the independent Christmas Hymn of 1929.
Maconchy’s charming three-part canonic Nowell, nowell, nowell, written for the Cambridge Hymnal, but little-heard since the seminal recording under Willcocks, also makes a welcome appearance. Holst’s fantasy Christmas Day combines three carols with imagination and flair: with the addition of The First Nowell as counterpoint, it is much more of a fantasia than Vaughan Williams’ straightforward sequence.
Most of us with choral backgrounds know by heart the page numbers of the most popular items from Carols for Choirs 1. Yet a handful are almost never sung – either because the words are regarded as fey or dated; or simply because, once the genie of Rutter was released in the next, there has been no going back. It is therefore a pleasure to encounter Armstrong Gibbs’ While the shepherds were watching, which might have found a more congenial home in the Oxford Book of Carols, even if Benedict’s Ellis’s rough-and-tumble shepherds seem to have escaped from the Cowley Carol Book.
The choir throughout is responsive, balanced, and forthright, especially well-suited to the livelier repertoire. Vaughan Williams’ Wassail Song is splendid, but Howells’ Here is the little door is insufficiently hushed and just a fraction too fast, thus missing some of the otherworldly awe of this exquisite miniature. Ireland’s The Holy Boy, originally the third of his Four Preludes for piano, is neatly done, but in essence has little to do with Christmas, even with Herbert Brown’s text grafted on to it.
Finzi’s superb The Brightness of This Day, a motet for double choir with baritone soloist – the excellent Ashley Riches – marries the traditional tune of The truth from above (which opens RVW’s Fantasia) to words by Henry Vaughan. Jamie Andrews is the model organist, and this magnificent rendering ought to prompt other ensembles.
Even rarer are There is no rose and Ave Maria by Rebecca Clarke, springing from the burgeoning rediscovery of early music at the beginning of the last century. In similar fashion, William Vann’s setting of Gurney’s Carol resuscitates a striking poem in intentional but affecting pastiche. Strongly recommended.
Review by Andrew Plant