Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Cameron, Harold Darke, Edward William Elgar, Patrick Hadley, Gustav Theodore Holst, Herbert Norman Howells, Charles Villiers Stanford, Samuel Sebastian Wesley
Performer: Vasari Singers, Roderick Williams, Julia Smith, Elizabeth Limb, Rachel Limb, Kate Jurka, Martin Ford
Conductor: Jeremy Backhouse
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Naxos
Catalogue: 8574416
Release: 2022
Size: 2.46 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Vaughan Williams: O Clap Your Hands (Psalm 47)
02. Cameron: Lux aeterna (after Elgar’s Op. 36)
Holst: Two Psalms H117
03. No. 2, Psalm CXLVIII (Arr. M. Ford for Choir & Organ)
04. Darke: O gladsome light
Howells: Anthems to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Op. 9
05. No. 3, Like As the Hart
06. Elgar: Give unto the Lord (Psalm XXIX), Op. 74
07. Wesley: Wash me throughly from my wickedness
08. Vaughan Williams: O Taste and See
09. Wesley: Blessed be the God and Father
Stanford: Bible Songs, Op. 113
10. No. 6, A Song of Wisdom (Arr. for Choir & Organ)
11. Hadley: My beloved spake
Vaughan Williams: Five Mystical Songs
12. No. 1, Easter
13. No. 2, I Got Me Flowers
14. No. 3, Love Bade Me Welcome
15. No. 4, The Call
16. No. 5, Antiphon
Featuring Vaughan Williams’ masterly and intensely personal Five Mystical Songs, this album reflects on the sources of inspiration of some of his sacred choral works, alongside gems of 19th- and early-20th-century English church music. Often setting the poetry of the King James Bible, the finely spun melodies and sensitivity to word-rhythm of composers from S.S. Wesley to Herbert Howells result in a uniquely British form of expression.