Composer: Kerry Andrew, Anton Bruckner, William Byrd, Gabriel Jackson, Hannah Kendall, Matthew Martin, John Nesbett, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Robert Parsons, Igor Stravinsky, Emil Tabakov, Dobrinka Tabakova, John Tavener, Judith Weir
Performer: Choir of Merton College Oxford, Francis Shepherd, Oliver Kelham, Charles Warren
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Delphian
Catalogue: DCD34144
Release: 2014
Size: 671 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
01. Weir: Ave Regina caelorum
02. Palestrina: Antiphon: Alma Redemptoris Mater
03. Tavener: Mother Of God, Here I Stand (from The Veil Of The Temple)
04. Andrew: Salve Regina
05. Nesbett: Magnificat
06. Kendall: Regina caeli
07. Byrd: Salve Regina
08. Stravinsky: Ave Maria
09. Tabakova: Alma redemptoris Mater
10. Jackson: I say that we are wound with mercy
11. Parsons: Ave Maria
Tavener: Hymn to the Mother of God
12. No. 1, A Hymn to the Mother of God
13. No. 2, Hymn for the Dormition of the Mother God
14. Martin: Salve sedes sapientiae
15. Bruckner: Ave Maria (1861), WAB 6
This is the fourth and final themed recording in a series that has confirmed Merton’s new choral foundation as one of the UK’s leading collegiate choirs. Benjamin Nicholas again draws from the landmark collection of more than 55 works written in celebration of the College’s 750th anniversary. Here, a new work by Judith Weir (newly appointed Master of the Queen’s Music) heads a set of the four Marian antiphons, all specially commissioned from women composers; while two further premiere recordings represent the work of regular Merton collaborators Gabriel Jackson and Matthew Martin. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, Peter Phillips’ expert direction of Byrd’s rarely performed ‘Salve Regina’, a bold statement of Catholic faith from Reformation England, and of John Nesbett’s late 15th-century ‘Magnificat’, a piece whose neglect on disc is astonishing, completes this portrait in sound of a woman who – as characterised in Alexandra Coghlan’s illuminating booklet essay – is at once virgin and mother, human and God-bearer, suppliant and Queen of Heaven.
What a choir….