In keeping with the recent trend towards historical reconstruction of liturgical services, the Westminster choir now offers its own version of a complete Sunday cycle for the Anglican Sunday after Pentecost, Trinity Sunday. Well, not entirely complete, but certainly complete enough for most church going parishioners. And as the Anglican tradition is relatively young compared to most (even though it has undergone considerable changes in the last 500 years or so), it is not as difficult to use music from yesteryear along with music of yesterday and today. This is not even a reconstruction per se, but instead a snapshot of current practice that one might see and hear were they to drop in at Westminster Abbey on this particular Sunday.
Despite the statement of the Dean of Westminster, Wesley Carr, that the Trinity “is not a revealed aspect of God”, and that it was only decided as an article of belief at the Second Ecumenical Council in 382—something that will have most Christians’ jaws dropping—he does give a fine summary of the current Anglican practices and penchants, musically speaking. And the music on this disc is meant to reflect those preferences today. However, overall I was a little disappointed in the program. Britten’s early Te Deum and Walton’s Jubilate are not the best examples of either’s churchly output, while Herbert Howell’s Westminster Service for Evensong seemed oddly incongruous with the twelve-minute Fantasia and Toccata in D minor by Charles Stanford that closes the program. In other words, the musical match doesn’t quite add up to a convincing whole. Even the rather interesting but strangely esoteric Missa Trinitatis Sanctae by contemporary composer Francis Grier—the most ambitious work on the program—is far removed from the rest of the offering. Hearing it at a Eucharistic service separate from the Matins and Evensong presented here might be quite pleasant, but grouped on one disc with the other services you cannot help but listen to everything together in context, and the context is subtly disconcerting.
The sound is a little more constricted than what I am used to with these forces. The organ has great presence in the few moments where it lets loose, but the program itself is quite treble-dominated, and I missed hearing the full impact of the lower voices. Of course, all is brilliantly sung, and Anglophiles in particular will find much to savor here, but if ever there was a call for full surround sound SACD, this was it.
— Steven Ritter
