Brian Kelly: St Francis of Assisi and other works

Brian Kelly: St Francis of Assisi and other works

REGCD585 (Regent Records, CD)

FIRST RELEASE (24 January 2025)
Tracks: 25
℗ 2025 Regent Records
© 2025 Regent Records
Main country of recording: United Kingdom
Sent to a reviewer on 3 January 2025

Katherine Mann, soprano
Bradley Smith, tenor
Stuart MacIntyre, baritone
Morgan Pearse, bass
The Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge
Britten Sinfonia
Adam Fiel, organ, piano
Sarah MacDonald, director

Bryan Kelly (born 1934) has been an exuberant presence in British musical life for over five decades. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music in London with Gordon Jacob and Herbert Howells. Further study followed in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Bryan Kelly has written works in all the main classical musical genres: symphony, concerto, opera, solo piano, as well as lighter orchestral music, works for brass band, and a notably a distinguished number of vocal works, including Kelly in C (1965) - a ground-breaking and uplifting setting of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, utilising Latin American rhythms. He writes in an approachable style, with an emphasis on strong melodic lines and rhythms, and demonstrates a consummate control of texture and colour.

This new recording features three works for choir. The first is a major cantata from 1981 for four soloists, choir and orchestra, based on the life of St Francis of Assisi, written in collaboration with poet John Fuller.

At the round earth's imagin'd corners (1977), commissioned by the Sheffield Bach Choir, is a sequence of six settings of intense religious texts from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century for solo tenor, choir and string orchestra.

For adoration is a more recent work, published in 2001, and is a set of five short anthems in contrasting styles for upper voices and organ.

The Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, under their director, Sarah MacDonald, has established an enviable reputation in their ongoing series of distinguished albums, each devoted to a single contemporary composer, in addition to their themed releases, including The Eternal Ecstasy - a survey of music in 'The Ecstatic Style'.

Canadian-born Sarah MacDonald was the first female Director of Music in an Oxbridge College Chapel, and recently celebrated twenty-five years in this role. She combines this with being Director of the Girl Choristers of Ely Cathedral, and is currently University Organist at Cambridge, and President of the Royal College of Organists.

 

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