EMR CD044 | DETAILS
  EMR CD044
   
  A GARLAND OF ENGLISH CHORAL WORKS
  Nicolai Chamber Choir (Stockholm)
Christian Ljunggren (cond.)
   
  EAN 5 060263 500445

In our first collaboration with overseas artists, EM Records is delighted to present the Nicolai Chamber Choir, a choral group associated with Stockholm Cathedral.  ‘A Garland of English Choral Works’ ranges from early delights by Thomas Morley and Pearsall, through Herbert Howells’s intense and moving Requiem, to Balfour Gardiner’s beautiful ‘Evening Hymn’. Of particular note are the choruses from ‘Olivet to Calvary’ by John Henry Maunder – a work that too long has lain overlooked and neglected, yet is now experiencing a resurgence of interest, especially in Scandinavian countries; and two part-songs by William Lloyd Webber, of which these are the World Première recordings.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Henry Balfour Gardiner (1877-1950)
1. ‘EVENING HYMN’ (1970)  
       

Herbert Howells (1892–1983)

REQUIEM (1932)

2. ‘Salvator Mundi’  
3. Psalm 23  
4. ‘Requiem aeternam’ I  
5. Psalm 121  
6. ‘Requiem aeternam’ II  
7. ‘I heard a Voice from Heaven’  
       

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)

8. ‘COME AWAY DEATH’ (1899)  
       

E.J. Moeran (1894–1950)

TWO SONGS FROM ‘SONGS OF SPRINGTIME’ (1931)

9. ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’  
10. ‘Sigh no more, ladies’  
       

Joseph Horovitz (b.1926)

11. ‘IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS’ (1973)  
       
Thomas Morley (c.1557–1602)
12. ‘IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS’  
       
William Lloyd Webber (1914–1982)
13. ‘MARGERY’ (World Première recording)  
14. ‘THE MOON’ (World Première recording)  
       
Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795–1856)
15. ‘LAY A GARLAND’ (1840)  
       
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924)
16. ‘SHALL WE GO DANCE?’, op.67 no.3  
       
Peter Warlock (1894–1930)
17. ‘ALL THE FLOWERS OF THE SPRING’ (1924)  
       
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
18. ‘THE EVENING WATCH’, op.43 no.1 (1924)  
       
Percy Fletcher (1879–1932)
19. ‘O MAN, REMEMBER’ from ‘THE PASSION OF CHRIST’ (1922)  
       

John Henry Maunder (1858–1920)

TWO CHORUSES FROM ‘OLIVET TO CALVARY’ (1904)

20. ‘The Saviour King goes forth to die!’  
21. ‘Droop, Sacred Head’  

 

REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD