A New Heaven = English Sacred Music – The Sixteen/ Harry Christophers – Decca 80013009, 72:04 **** [Distr. by Universal]:
I think it has been around 20 years since I last came upon an album like this. Using just the choir and an organ, Decca has seen fit to honor The Sixteen on their 30th anniversary with this collection of sacred English music from around 1850 to much more recent times. My benchmark recording of some of this music (I was glad, Jerusalem, Blessed City) was an old Argo recording of the Winchester Cathedral Choir and accompanying forces (including orchestra) under the leadership of David Hill. That record still holds up very well, and is perhaps a little more dramatic than this one with its use of the larger forces, and the sound on those Argo recordings (another Decca company) is still fantastic.
But this one is equally good, the 26-odd members of The Sixteen sounding every bit as full and fat as the Winchesters, though the latter were three times the size. Oh the way a recording can fool you! Who ever said it was an honest medium? The selections here are all Brit-fodder for those who love it, like the inimitable I was glad by Mr. Parry, used to this day as the coronation procession when such things are called for. John Rutter makes it into the hallowed few here, the only composer on this disc still breathing. There is really nothing to complain about, this group being perhaps the foremost choral ensemble in the British Isles today, and one of the best in the world. Its recent Messiah blew me away, leaping into my personal top 5 list for that piece, and there is no end to the great works they have recorded that easily compete with just about any on the market.
The sound here is beautifully spacious and broad, reflective of its church setting, clear and nicely comprehensible. If you like this sort of thing, and everyone should have at least one disc of Anglophile church delights, don’t hesitate.
TrackList:
PARRY: I was glad, WOOD: O thou the central Orb, HARRIS: Faire is the heaven, STANFORD: Beati quorum via, BAIRSTOW: Blessed City, PARRY: Jerusalem, BALFOUR GARDINER: Evening Hymn, GOODALL: The Lord is my shepherd, BAINTON: And I saw a new heaven, PARRY: My soul there is a country, STAINER: I saw the Lord, HOWELLS: Like as the hart, WOOD: Hail, gladdening light, RUTTER: The Lord is my shepherd
— Steven Ritter
