David Briggs
Hail, gladdening Light and other works
Choir of Trinity College Cambridge / Stephen Layton
Hyperion CDA68440 61 mins
Stephen Layton and David
Briggs were organ scholars at King’s College, Cambridge in the 1980s, and this dazzling new release is a follow-up to their 2010 album of Briggs’s music. As before, the programme mixes Briggs’s choral pieces with organ improvisations.
The organ, played by Briggs himself, is an exuberant, carilloning presence in the opening Jubilate Deo, spurring the Trinity College Choir’s adrenaline-fired performance. Briggs’s first improvisation follows, taking the opening theme of the Jubilate into distinctly murkier territory, before expanding to a gigantic peroration on the mighty organ of Saint-eustache, Paris, where the recording was made.
The unaccompanied Set me as a seal brings a lightening of mood and texture, the soaring soprano lines bequeathed a tingling afterlife by the generous Saint-eustache acoustic. God be in my head adds a cossetting organ accompaniment, the Trinity choir distilling exactly the soothing intimacy of what Briggs calls ‘a personal prayer’.
Other highlights include Briggs’s magisterial setting of Surrexit Dominus, complete with a blazing Toccata postlude; the chirruping murmuration of flute stops in the Intermezzo improvisation; and the juxtaposition of searching choral harmonies with solo-voice plainchant in The Trinity College Fauxbourdon Service.
The Te Deum from Briggs’s
St Davids Service shows all involved at a summit of achievement, the roiling organ work of Briggs jousting with the magnificently dynamic and articulate Trinity choir, marshalled by Layton. Terry Blain PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
Sacred songs and anthems
Solomon’s Knot
Prospero PROSP0086 86:01 mins (2 discs)
You can sense Monteverdi reaching out to clasp the hand of Purcell across the span of the 17th century in the music of George Jeffreys (1610-85). A gifted composer, he suffered neglect in his own lifetime and remains largely forgotten today. Lost Majesty, featuring 16 sacred songs and anthems, is a major step into the limelight he deserves.
Jeffreys was in fact a part-time composer. His day job was as steward to Sir Christopher Hatton III, from a prominent Royalist family whose seat was Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire. Now a palatial ruin, the house provided an atmospheric, resonant setting for this superb recording.
Encouraged by his patron, Jeffreys became familiar with the highly expressive and flexible Italian style of composition that was in fashion at Charles I’s court. However, he found himself on the wrong side of history, enduring the Civil War, the execution of the King and the Interregnum, when Cromwell’s parliamentarians disbanded cathedral choirs and banned concerts.
The anguish of the times is ever present in Jeffreys’s compositional style, evoked by quicksilver mood swings, a fatalistic use of dissonance and furtive chiaroscuro. It’s as if he was transposing the tortured hearts and sensual spirits of Monteverdi’s love madrigals to the turbulent politics of England in the mid 1600s.
The accomplished performers of Solomon’s Knot blend beautifully, but are not afraid to stand out as individuals, using colour and vibrato to enliven these dramatic texts with a sense of urgency and expressive power that’s rare in early English vocal ensembles.
This is an outstanding and important recording, throwing some fascinating light on the shady interlude between the glories of Elizabethan choral music and the exuberance of the Restoration. It comes highly recommended. Ashutosh Khandekar PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
This debut album gathers together 20 Schubert lieder, both old favourites and those less frequently heard. Katy Hamilton’s engaging liner note illuminates the artists’ intention to showcase Schubert’s ‘gentle and compassionate probing of the human condition’.
Harriet Burns’s voice is brilliant and rich, comfortable even in stratospheric heights. She completely inhabits each character or scenario she depicts, her emotional range spanning deepest tragedy to naïve girlishness. Ian Tindale matches her colour, adds layers of expression by teasing out inner voices, and grounds the sound with a rich bass.
Despite the odd ‘silly’ number, the album is striking for its dignity and grace, recalling Schubert’s Viennese Classical roots as well as his debt to contemporary opera – the robust opening of Erster Verlust (‘First
Loss’) is more Greek tragedy than weeping teenager.
Tempos lean towards the stately, revealing new depths even in songs as trivial as Die Männer sind méchant or fragmented song-structures like Lambertine. There are moments of magic, such as the key change in Suleika I, when Burn sings of the thousand kisses she will receive before the hills darken (‘Eh’ noch diese Hügel düstern’). Burns delivers the opening of Die Liebe hat gelogen like a Handelian queen;
Der Zwerg is likewise characterised by noble pathos; Viola – extremely challenging in its length – unfolds and holds together superbly.
Despite the occasional unexpected vowel sound, or the odd repeated phrase which needs something different, this album fulfils its aim. The extremely high standard of musicianship is matched by moving, evocative and thoughtful interpretation. Natasha Loges
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING