Composer: Jonathan Dean Harvey
Performer: St John’s College Choir Cambridge
Conductor: Andrew Nethsingha
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Signum
Catalogue: SIGCD456
Release: 2016
Size: 218 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. I Love the Lord
02. Magnificat
03. Nunc Dimittis
04. Toccata for Organ and Tape
05. Come Holy Ghost
06. Praise ye the Lord
Missa Brevis
07. I. Kyrie
08. II. Gloria
09. III. Sanctus & Benedictus
10. IV. Agnus Dei
11. The Royal Banners Forward Go
12. Laus Deo
13. The Annunciation
The Choir of St John’s College Cambridge launch their new series of recordings by exploring the close connections between the college and celebrated British composer Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012), in a disc of works for choir and organ. Harvey s music has influenced a generation of composers, described by The Guardian s Tom Service as being ‘at once vividly contemporary and timeless’. The Choir’s director Andrew Nethsingha reflects on his own experiences and work with the Jonathan Harvey in CD s programme note, in particular as the choir collaborated on what would be Jonathan Harvey s final work for the choir, The Annunciation (2011).
An online listing stating only “Deo. Harvey. Nethsingha.” might not give the potential listener much to go on. What you have here is a collection of settings of standard sacred texts by composer Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012), with the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge (men and boys, as young as ten), conducted by Andrew Nethsingha. The performance is unimpeachable; both Harvey and Nethsingha had ties to this ensemble, which is strikingly clean in what is really quite difficult choral material. It may come as a surprise to learn that Harvey, with an essentially conservative British choral language, was invited by none other than Pierre Boulez to join the IRCAM community in France, but after hearing these pieces and reading Nethsingha’s informative notes, you’ll get an idea of why this happened. Harvey’s basic harmonic language and melodic shapes are conventional, but the way he develops them is not. His structures include numerological and other symbolic devices, and pieces often deepen into angular, difficult writing as they proceed. The result is a set of pieces that’s accessible, yet offers much to study; that’s rigorous, yet responds to texts in a personal way. Some pieces are a cappella, others have an organ. The choral work, from the 1970s and 1980s, is uniformly strong, but perhaps sample the riveting Toccata for organ and tape (track four) for a taste of Harvey’s ability to bridge traditional and contemporary idioms, and for the ringing tones of the St. John’s organ, always a pleasure. Recommended.