I Was Glad - Parry Choral Music
REGCD580 (Regent Records, CD)
DDD
FIRST RELEASE (6 September 2024)
Playing time: 71'11"
Tracks: 11
Booklet pages: 20
℗ 2024 Regent Records Ltd
© 2024 Regent Records Ltd
Main country of recording: United Kingdom
Reviewer: Gerald Fenech
Review of I Was Glad - Parry Choral Music published on 20 September 2024
The Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge
Julian Collings, organ (tracks 1-3 and 11)
David Rowland, director
Charles Hubert Hastings Parry:
1 I was glad when they said unto me
2 Hear my words, ye people
3 Blest pair of Sirens
4 Music, when soft voices die
Songs of farewell
5 My soul, there is a country
6 I know my soul hath power to know all things
7 Never weather-beaten sail
8 There is an old belief
9 At the round earth's imagined corners
10 Lord, let me know mine end
Hubert Parry, arranged by Edward Elgar and transcribed for organ by Joseph Wicks:
11 Jerusalem
A collection of Parry's best-loved choral works, including 'Songs of farewell' - together with a rarity, the beautiful partsong 'Music, when soft voices die'. For the last twenty years the 'Songs of farewell' have been a repertoire piece for the Chapel Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge, and singers who were former members of the choir during that period were invited to join the current (2023) choir to take part in the recording of the 'Songs' on Saturday 18 March 2023. The following day all Chapel Choir alumni were invited to join them for the remainder of the recording. This choir of over one hundred singers bestow a richness to the larger-scale anthems: 'I was glad', 'Hear my words, ye people', 'Blest pair of sirens', and 'Jerusalem' - the last recorded in Joseph Wicks's transcription for solo organ of Edward Elgar's lavish orchestration heard annually at 'The Last Night of the Proms'. The logistics of finding a suitable venue for making the recording - easily accessible for alumni from across the country, large enough to accommodate the number of singers, with a suitably rich acoustic, and a large English Romantic organ which could do justice to the accompanied anthems, led us to the Church of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London. This recording is released as a celebration of the work of the Chapel Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge, and David Rowland, who marks forty years as Director of Music at Christ's College in 2024.
Recorded 18-19 March 2024 at St Michael's Church, Cornhill, London, UK.