Bairstow, Harris & Stanford: Choral Works – Westminster Abbey Choir/ Peter Holder/ James O’Donnell [Complete list of works below]— Hyperion CDA 68259, 75:40 ****:
O’Donnell’s work with the choir has produced some of the finest recordings coming out of Britain for years now. They never seem intimidated by the vagaries of their own, really large space. And when you couple this with the whopping five-manual, 94-stop organ, it is simply amazing how big a sound this only 30-member ensemble produces. I guess this comes from doing it year after year, always knowing just when to push and when to pull back, the proper coloration of the choristers, and who can do what, and when. Whatever the secret, they have solved it.
This recording takes three of the most beloved, if not always known to the general public, composers who all wrote for the Anglican church with a special flair and stereotypically English sound—and this is not a slight. Coronations, wars, and royal weddings are themed out here, with the three composers sounding remarkably attuned to one another, even though they all died about 20 years apart—Stanford in 1924, Bairstow in 1946, and Harris in 1973. All were born in the 1800s, with Harris enjoying a century of life.
Edward Bairstow, whose famous Blessed city, heavenly Salem opens the disc, is a composer interested in the “big” idea, and one that incorporates the relationship of the choir to the organ. You can readily see this here, a massive set of choral variations based on a seventh-century plainsong chant. By contrast, Stanford’s Evening Service in A is much more to the liking of big “tunes” that hit you over the head in a brilliant fashion, yet is symphonic in sweep, hearkening back to Brahms and even Wagner in its incessant pictorial operatic resonance, opera being a genre that Stanford loved. To complete the trilogy, William Harris’s Faire is the heaven easily tops his masterpiece list with many recordings, and few as good as this one. Harris was a lover of resolved dissonance. A consummate choir trainer, he became organist successively at New College and in 1929 Christ Church, Oxford, finally migrating to St. George’s Chapel, Windsor in 1933.
These are just samples of a well-packed album that is English to the core, a delight for Anglophiles, perhaps a curiosity for others, yet important to any well-rounded church music lover of any stripe. Hyperion is lucky to have the Westminsters in their corral, and this disc maintains the high standards already set.
Compositions:
BAIRSTOW:
Blessed city, heavenly Salem
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
The Lamentation
HARRIS:
Bring us, O Lord God
Strengthen ye the weak hands
Faire is the heaven
Flourish for an Occasion;
STANFORD:
‘A Song of Wisdom,’ op. 113, no. 6a
‘O for a closer walk with God’, op. 113, no. 6b
For lo, I raise up, op. 145
Evening Service in A, op. 12
Festival Communion Service in B flat, op. 128: ‘Gloria in excelsis’
—Steven Ritter
