Locus Iste: The Chor of St John’s College, Cambridge

Signum Classics ★★★★

While St John’s College Cambridge dates back to its foundation in the 16th century, the current chapel housing its famous choir, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, is only 150 years old. To celebrate this, a new recording – the choir’s 100th -– features a classic anthem from each decade since 1869. The disc begins with the dense double choir sonorities of William Harris’ Faire is the Heaven and ends with Parry’s grandiloquent Blest Pair of Sirens, and en route it revels in a cocktail of English cathedral music that includes Finzi’s uplifting God is gone up, the mellifluous sweep of Stanford’s Justorum animae, the simplicity of Tavener’s The Lamb, Britten’s playful Jubilate in C, some modern gems from Jonathan Dove and Ned Rorem, and the title track, Bruckner’s Locus Iste. There are some polished performances under Andrew Nethsingha’s direction, and the quirky addition of cellist and current undergraduate Laura van der Heijden in Giles Swayne’s Adam lay ybounden.