Composer: Philip Wilby
Performer: Mhairi Lawson, Jack Wilson, Helen Charlston, Thomas Elwin, Ben McAteer, Seán Boylan, David Leigh, Belfast Cathedral Choir
Conductor: Matthew Owens
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Resonus
Catalogue: RES10298
Release: 2022
Size: 1.18 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. God’s Grandeur
The Knaresborough Service
02. I. Magnificat
03. II. Nunc dimittis
An English Passion According to Saint Matthew
04. I. Collect
Part One
05. II. Processional Hymn
06. III. The Upper Room – Hymn 2
07. IV. Denial
08. V. Gethsemane and the Arrest
09. VI. Before Caiaphas
10. VII. Peter’s Denial
11. VIII. Before the Governor
12. IX. Hymn 3
13. X. Barabbas
Part Two
14. XI. Golgotha
15. XII. Hymn 4
16. XIII. Apotheosis
17. XIV. Procession of Christ and His Cross
18. XV. Recessional Hymn
Composer Phillip Wilby has built his reputation on writing for brass band and music for the Christian liturgy, for which he composes extensively. The three works presented on this album were all composed between 2014 and 2019, the earliest of which is the Knaresborough Service, commissioned by the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire.
The anthem God’s Grandeur was written in 2017 and is a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem of the same name. Wilby’s An English Passion According to Saint Matthew was written in 2018, for Matthew Owens and the choir of Wells Cathedral. One important characteristic of the work is the congregational hymns are taken from the collection of English tunes, published by Vaughan Williams in his English Hymnal of 1906. These hymns, with their timeless melodies, anchor the Passion in a very English setting.