Leighton / Martin: Masses for double choir
The Choir of King’s College London / Joseph Fort Some time in the 1920s Frank Martin, a Swiss Calvinist by upbringing, created a radiant Latin setting of the Mass, but kept it as ‘a matter between God and myself’. It was finally performed forty years later, around the same time that the Edinburgh-based composer Kenneth Leighton made his own double-choir setting – a work with moments of striking stillness, delightful to choral singers yet rarely recorded. Contrasts and comparisons abound in this fascinating pairing of works from the supposedly godless twentieth century, and are brought out to the full by the Choir of King’s College London’s impassioned performances. ‘A performance of astonishing intensity and musicality … fervently delivered by the gloriously robust King’s College London choir’ — Gramophone, May 2019