Praise Him with Trumpets

BENJAMIN BRITTEN G R A C E - E VA N G E L I N E M A S O N C EC I L I A Mc D OWA L L DA M E J U D I T H W E I R E L I Z A B E T H P O S TO N

Praise Him with

Trumpets

BRISTOL CHORAL SOCIETY H i l a r y Campbell conductor Richard Moore organ

Charlotte Mobbs soprano Steven Kings piano

Praise Him with Trumpets BRISTOL CHORAL SOCIETY CHARLOTTE MOBBS 12–15, 18, 20, 22 soprano JO HARRIS 11, 23, NEIL BROUGH 11 trumpets EVVA MIZERSKA 16–18 cello

Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) 1 2 3 4

STEVEN KINGS 12–18, 20, 22 piano RICHARD MOORE 1–11, 18, 23 organ HILARY CAMPBELL conductor

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As well as to the composers and all who took part in this recording, our enormous thanks go to the Head Master, the Director of Music and staff of Clifton College, Bristol.

Thanks to Bristol Choral Society’s Patrons (John & Mary Prior), Benefactors and Friends and particularly to the following individuals who sponsored this recording: Svetlana Bajic-Raymond, Olly Caldecott, Joi & Roy Demery, Nigel Edwards, Jan Elliott, Nathan Evans, Colin Fergusson, Kate Floyd, Nathan Gerby, Caroline Hanks, Elaine Hardy (in memory of Carrie Hardy), Heather Harries, Heather Holmes, Elaine & John Hopper, Phil Hopkins, Mike Hurst, Sabine Klepsch, Annette Milburn (for Granny June), Helen Moss, Pamela Moult, Sue Otty, Julia Parker & Steve Pill, Tracy Parr, Geoff & Martina Peattie, Julian & Caroline Rivers, Frances Roberts, Lionel & Maroussia Rochigneux, John Waldron, Kitty Walsh, Brian Watson, Lesley Wilson.

Recorded on 27-29 October 2023 in Clifton College Chapel, Bristol Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover: Matias Caceres/Unsplash Session photography: Will Coates-Gibson/Foxbrush Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com Made and printed in the EU

Emily Wenman soprano

For the Mouse is a creature

[1:02]

For the flowers are great blessings

[2:22]

For I am under the same accusation For H is a spirit

[2:27] [1:03]

For the instruments are by their rhimes Hallelujah

[2:28] [1:39]

Phillipa Thomas alto

Robert Jenkins tenor

Lawrence White bass

Judith Weir (b. 1954)

Praise Him with Trumpets * [4:51]

Cecilia McDowall (b. 1951)

Four Shakespeare Songs I. What ’tis to love [2:04] II. Give me my robe [3:44] III. How should I your true love know?

[2:43] IV. First rehearse [1:33]

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Bristol Choral Society are extremely grateful for the support of a number of organisations and individuals which made this recording possible.

Rejoice in the Lamb Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues [1:23] Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter [1:23] Hallelujah from the heart of God [1:27] For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry [2:16]

13 14 15

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A Memory of the Ocean * I. A memory of the ocean [7:00] II. I am a pool [7:29] II. Sea of Amethyst [4:31]

19 Gustav Holst (1874–1934)

Psalm CXLVIII (Lord, Who hast made us for thine own)

Grace-Evangeline Mason (b. 1994) 16 17

[5:05]

20

Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994)

Ophelia’s Song [2:47]

21

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)

O taste and see [1:51]

www.delphianrecords.com

22

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Orpheus with his lute [3:01]

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23

Elizabeth Poston (1905–1987)

Festal Te Deum *

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Total playing time

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* premiere recordings

[8:57] [73:18]

Notes on the music A multiplicity of meanings lurks beneath the modern definition of ‘praise’ as an act of thanksgiving. The verb first appears in the written record in the early 1200s, adopted from Old French pris or ‘price’, a word then associated with commerce on both sides of the Channel. Over time it became synonymous with ‘value’ and ‘reward’, the latter equivalent to the German word for praise, Preis. The connection between praise and reward took root in England in the vernacular language of medieval worship, running in company with the Latin laudare ‘to praise’ to carry the sense of a transaction contracted between the worshipper and the worshipped, of a reward paid by humankind to God. It was incumbent upon Christians to express unconditional love for their creator, ‘with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,’ as St Mark recalls, quoting Deuteronomy, in his account of the ministry of Jesus. Songs of praise thus became a natural condition of Christian worship, part of communal life reflected in the early and enduring Latin hymn Te Deum laudamus, ‘We praise you O God’, and musical settings of laudatory verses from the Book of Psalms.

The works on this recording convey both the value and the reward of praise. Together they encompass the vow made by George Herbert to the ‘King of Glorie, King of Peace’ in the second of his ‘Praise’ poems from The Temple (1633):

Wherefore with my utmost art I will sing thee, And the cream of all my heart I will bring thee.

Herbert’s religious sentiments are mirrored in Shakespeare’s secular verse, in the all-toohuman emotions and unconditional love that run through Cecilia McDowall’s song settings, and in the supernatural powers of Orpheus, whose songs can turn winter to spring, banish ‘grief of heart’. Grace-Evangeline Mason’s A Memory of the Sea is concerned with praise of another kind, for the eternal mystery of nature, for the ebb and flow of ocean tides that conceal depths unknown.

Rejoice in the Lamb, subtitled ‘Festival Cantata’, was commissioned by Walter Hussey, then vicar of St Matthew’s, Northampton, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the church in 1943. Britten drew its text from the extended poem Jubilate Agno by the eighteenth-century visionary poet Christopher Smart, the surviving fragments of which were first published in 1939. The ‘ingenious Mr Smart’ completed much of his work while detained in a private madhouse at Bethnal Green. During his youth as a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, he was drawn to London’s pleasure gardens and the company of the capital’s leading musicians and performing artists. Smart’s libertine lifestyle, heavy debts, frequent drunkenness

and overwork led to his admission to St Luke’s Hospital in Islington and later to the Bethnal Green asylum; however, it seems that he may have been more eccentric than mad: 'For I have a greater compass both of mirth and melancholy than another,’ as he noted in Jubilate.

Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb ignited interest in Smart’s output and prompted scholars to reconsider his value as an original voice among English pre-Romantics. The celebratory character of the poet’s work soars throughout the solo soprano’s ‘For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry’, while Jubilate’s most striking verse, ‘For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour’, elicits a suitably inspired musical response from Britten, one touched by traces of boyish glee. The composer’s innate ability to marry words to music speaks in the telling restraint of his setting for solo tenor of ‘For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ’ and again in the bold call-and-response choral writing of ‘For the instruments are by their rhimes’, the vivacity of which is reinforced by the organ’s rapid triplet figures and descending scales.

Rejoice in the Lamb concludes with reverential repetitions of ‘Hallelujah’, a version of the Hebrew ‘hallelu Yah’, ‘Praise God’.

The word recurs in Gustav Holst’s expansive treatment of Psalm 148 for choir and organ, one of a pair of psalm settings he made in

1912. Lord, Who hast made us for thine own, originally written for the composer’s pupils at St Paul’s Girls’ School in London and later adapted for mixed voices, takes its text from a paraphrase of the original psalm by Frances Ralph Gray, one of the first lecturers appointed to Westfield College in Hampstead.

Holst married Gray’s metrical verse to a melody conceived for the hymn ‘Lasst uns erfreuen herzlich seh’ and first published in 1623 in Auserlesene, Catholische, Geistliche Kirchengesäng. The old German CounterReformation hymn found favour with Anglican congregations following its appearance in 1906 in the first edition of The English Hymnal, helped by the pealing triple-time alleluias embedded within its arrangement

by Holst’s friend Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Holst decorates the hymn tune with rich and varied harmonisations of the ‘Alleluia’ melody, engineering what the composer’s daughter Imogen called ‘glimpses of beauty’.

O taste and see was completed in December 1952 and received its first performance the following June at Communion during the coronation service of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey. Vaughan Williams’ widow later recalled that the brief yet eloquent motet’s opening solo proved ‘a perfectly calculated dramatic effect; after so much richness of [musical] texture and grandeur, the unaccompanied treble voice held the listeners in its soaring tranquillity’. The work’s

Notes on the music melodic line is marked by what its composer described as the ‘purely intuitive, not calculated’ quality of folksong.

Grace-Evangeline Mason’s A Memory of the Ocean, scored for choir, piano and cello, was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society, supported by the Vaughan Williams Foundation, to mark the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’ birth. Bristol Choral Society was invited by the RPS to give the first performance which took place in the summer of 2023 under Hilary Campbell’s direction. The composer was directly inspired by Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony, not least by its engagement with the mystical nature of Walt Whitman’s verse and expression of the interdependence, the ‘vast similitude’, by which all life is connected. It also evokes the symphony’s use of chorus as an essential element in its palette of timbres and textures.

‘Similarly [in A Memory of the Ocean], the choir provides a fundamental surface for the piano to take moments of prominence throughout the pieces,’ notes Mason. The trilogy opens with a setting of the composer’s own verse, ‘A memory of the ocean’, the exquisite imagery of which takes its lead from Memory of the Ocean (2020) by the gloriously inventive sculptor Hirotoshi Ito. Mason marks the sea’s swirling power with swinging choral chords above which the piano unfolds shimmering echoes of its alluring voice and engages in dialogue with the cello’s

slow, yearning song. The music dissolves after a series of climactic statements of ‘The sea’, each subtly different, to leave the sounds of humming and near-whispered words and fading fragments of melody from cello and piano.

The words of ‘I am a pool’ and ‘Sea of Amethyst’ are based on verses from Rivers to the Sea (1915) by the American lyric poet Sara Teasdale. ‘I am a pool’ opens with a sublime a cappella choral chant, the apparent stillness of which is ruffled by the cello’s countermelody, metrical shifts and increasingly complex, intense choral harmonies. The ‘sound of the sea’, by turns terrible and beautiful, returns to the enigmatic calm of the rock pool, suggestive of a metaphor for the hidden depths of the conscious mind. ‘Sea of Amethyst’ penetrates an idyllic nocturnal seascape to reveal a complex internal struggle waged by love. Mason reflects nature’s coruscating beauty in the work’s initial interaction between solo soprano, humming choral voices and the pellucid sounds of piano arpeggios and high harmonics on cello. The spell of the composition’s sustained reverie is broken by the soloist’s final sad recollection of the ‘sea of amethyst’ and her line’s brief extension by unison altos.

While best known today for her carol Jesus Christ the apple tree, Elizabeth Poston played a significant role in the development of British

music-making in the decades after the Second World War. She helped create the BBC’s Third Programme in 1947, became president of the Society of Women Musicians and, following the example set by her teacher Vaughan Williams, proved an influential collector of folksongs and carols. Poston owned a fine ear for the music of poetry and understood how to retain its essence in her compositions, many of which were posthumously discovered as manuscripts stored in the attic of Rook’s Nest House, her home in Old Stevenage (and setting for its former occupant E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End). The Festal Te Deum was another commission for St Matthew’s, Northampton, for its patronal festival in 1959. The manuscript, buried as an uncatalogued item in Northamptonshire Record Office, was rediscovered in 2018 and put into print two years later. It opens with a clarion call from solo trumpet and organ, answered by full choir, and goes on to display the brilliance of Poston’s choral scoring, especially so in her translucent setting of ‘The glorious company of the apostles praise thee’ and again in the resounding contrapuntal repetitions of ‘magnify’.

Judith Weir’s Praise Him with Trumpets, written to mark the quincentenary of Hampton Court Palace and first performed there in 2015, takes its text from Psalms 146 and 150. It begins with an introduction for two trumpets and organ, sprightly setters of

the work’s jubilant mood, the momentum of which spills into the declamatory entry for sopranos and altos and its continuation by tenors and basses. Weir plays with dancing rhythms to underline the psalmist’s vision of praise as the sum of physical activity and spiritual ecstasy.

‘It seems that music, not only in its vague aspects but in its very details, was an essential part of the spiritual life of the sixteenth century,’ observed Ralph Vaughan Williams in one of his many pithy essays. ‘It was not for nothing that Shakespeare and Milton were skilled musicians,’ he continued.

Not for nothing, indeed, as Shakespeare proved countless times in the melody of his verse and the musicality of his song texts. Vaughan Williams’ Orpheus with his lute, to words from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, was written around 1901–2 during his long apprenticeship as a composer, perhaps intended for a stage production.

First performed in a concert of songs and other pieces by Holst and Vaughan Williams, its style reflects the composer’s formative studies with Parry while serving notice of his lifelong genius for melodic invention.

Ophelia’s Song was written in 1926 during Elizabeth Maconchy’s time at the Royal College of Music, where Vaughan Williams was among her teachers. Its haunting simplicity stems from the storytelling tradition of English folksong.

Notes on the music Cecilia McDowall’s eloquent musical language is distinguished by a highly refined lyricism and rare sensibility for expressive nuance.

Those qualities take centre stage in her Four Shakespeare Songs, heirs to the tradition of fine Shakespeare settings by, among others, Finzi, Moeran and Warlock.

She opens her cycle of love songs with Silvius’ confession of idealistic love from As You Like It, delivered here in the manner of a sophisticated cabaret song. ‘Give me my robe’ captures the defiant spirit of Cleopatra’s final speech, having received the asp’s deadly bite, and her yearning for the afterlife, while

Texts ‘How should I your true love know?’ conveys Ophelia’s grief for the loss of her father and dreadful realisation that she has been used, not loved, by Hamlet. Despair yields to joy in ‘First rehearse’, a delightful setting of Titania’s invitation to the fairy world to dance and sing. © 2024 Andrew Stewart Andrew Stewart is a writer and journalist chiefly concerned with classical music. He is also co-author of the Boutiquestrilogy and Suzanne Cooper: Paintings Under the SpareRoom Bed (Mainstone Press).

Rejoice in the Lamb 1 Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb.

Nations, and languages, and every Creature in which is the breath of Life.

Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together.

2 Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar and consecrate his spear to the Lord.

Let Ishmail dedicate a Tyger, and give praise for the liberty in which the Lord has let him at large.

Let Balaam appear with an ass, and bless the Lord his people and his creatures for a reward eternal.

Let Daniel come forth with a Lion, and praise God with all his might through faith in Christ Jesus.

Let Ithamar minister with a Chamois, and bless the name of Him that cloatheth the naked.

Let Jakim with the Satyr bless God in the dance.

Let David bless with the Bear – the beginning of victory to the Lord – to the Lord the perfection of excellence –

3 Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

4 For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.

For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

For he knows that God is his saviour.

For God has bless’d him in the variety of his movements.

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God.

5 For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.

For this is a true case – Cat takes female mouse – male mouse will not depart, but stands threat’ning and daring. … If you will let her go, I will engage you, as prodigious a creature as you are.

For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.

For the Mouse is of an hospitable disposition.

Texts 6 For the flowers are great blessings.

For the flowers have their angels even the words of God’s creation.

For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.

For there is a language of flowers.

For the flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.

7 For I am under the same accusation with my

Saviour – For they said, he is besides himself.

For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites me with his staff.

For Silly fellow! Silly fellow! is against me and belongeth neither to me nor to my family.

For I am in twelve HARDSHIPS, but he that was born of a virgin shall deliver me out of all.

8 For H is a spirit and therefore he is God.

For K is king and therefore he is God. For L is love and therefore he is God. For M is musick and therefore he is God.

For the flute rhimes are tooth youth suit mute and the like.

For the Bassoon rhimes are pass class and the like.

For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place and the like.

For the Clarinet rhimes are clean seen and the like.

For the trumpet rhimes are sound bound and the like.

For the TRUMPET of God is a blessed intelligence and so are all the instruments in HEAVEN. For GOD the Father Almighty plays upon the harp of stupendous magnitude and melody.

For at that time malignity ceases and the devils themselves are at peace.

For this time is perceptible to man by a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul.

10 Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

Christopher Smart (1722–1771), from Jubilate Agno 9 For the instruments are by their rhimes.

For the Shawm rhimes are lawn fawn moon boon and the like.

For the harp rhimes are sing ring string and the like.

For the cymbal rhimes are bell well toll soul and the like.

11 Praise Him with Trumpets

For as long as I live, I will praise the Lord; I will sing psalms to my God all my life long.

Put no faith in princes, in any man who has no power to save.

He breathes his last breath, he returns to the dust: Praise him with fanfares on the trumpet.

The Lord feeds the hungry and sets the prisoner free.

The Lord loves the righteous and watches over the stranger; Praise him with fanfares on the trumpet, Praise him with tambourines and dancing, Praise him in the vault of heaven, the vault of his power; Praise him with the clash of cymbals; The Lord shall reign for ever.

Verses from Psalms 146 and 150; translation from the New English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved.

Four Shakespeare Songs

12 I. What ’tis to love

What ’tis to love: It is to be all made of sighs and tears, It is to be all made of faith and service, It is to be all made of fantasy, All made of passion and all made of wishes, All adoration, duty, and observance, All humbleness, all patience and impatience, All purity, all trial, all obeisance.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), As You Like It, Act V, scene ii 13 II. Give me my robe

Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have Immortal longings in me. Now no more The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.

Yare, good Iras, quick, quick. Methinks I hear Antony call. I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act. I hear him mock The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men To excuse their after wrath. – Husband, I come!

Now to that name my courage prove my title.

I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life. – So, have you done?

Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.

Farewell, long farewell.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, scene ii

Texts 14 III. How should I your true love know?

How should I your true love know From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon.

He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.

White his shroud as the mountain snow Larded all with sweet flowers; Which bewept to the grave did go With true-love showers.

Hamlet, Act IV, scene v 15 IV. First rehearse

First rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note; Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we sing, and bless this place.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, scene ii

A Memory of the Ocean

16 I. A memory of the ocean

The Sea Sways, swirls, Foams, unfurls, And yet how still, How still, A memory of the ocean, A memory of the sea

The Sea, Hurls, hides, Twirls great tides, And yet how deep, How wide The sea, as if speaking, What are you trying to say?

Across the green expanse I thought of you today A memory of the ocean, A memory of the sea

18 III. Sea of Amethyst

III. Sea of Amethyst Beyond the sleepy hills, The sun sinks in yellow mist, The sky is fresh with dewy stars Above a sea of amethyst.

Yet in the city of my love.

High noon burns the heavens afar For him the happiness of light, and in my heart, a timid star.

after Sara Teasdale, ‘Off Gibraltar’

Grace-Evangeline Mason 17 II. I am a pool

I am a pool in a peaceful place, I greet the great sky face to face, I know the stars and the stately moon And the wind that runs with rippling shoon – But why does it always bring to me The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea?

The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green, But the wind comes whispering in between, In the dead of night when the sky is deep The wind comes waking me out of sleep – Why does it always bring to me The far-off, terrible call of the sea?

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933), ‘The Sea-Wind’

19 Psalm CXVIII

Lord, who hast made us for thine own, Hear as we sing before thy throne. Alleluia.

Accept thy children’s reverent praise For all thy wondrous works and ways Alleluia.

Waves, rolling in on every shore, Pause at his footfall and adore. Alleluia.

Ye torrents rushing from the hills, Bless him whose hand your fountains fills.

Alleluia.

Earth, ever through the power divine, Seedtime and harvest shall be thine. Alleluia.

Sweet flowers that perfume all the air, Thank him that he hath made you fair.

Alleluia.

Burn lamps of night, with constant flame, Shine to the honour of his name. Alleluia.

Thou sun, whom all the lands obey, Renew his praise from day to day.

Alleluia.

Frances Ralph Gray (1861–1935)

20 Ophelia’s Song

See track 14

21 O taste and see

O taste and see how gracious the Lord is: blest is the man that trusteth in him.

Psalm 34, v. 8 22 Orpheus with his lute

Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing: To his music plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act III, scene i

Texts 23 Festal Te Deum

Te Deum: We praise thee, O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.

All the earth doth worship thee: the Father everlasting.

To thee all angels cry aloud: the heavens, and all the powers therein.

To thee Cherubin and Seraphin: continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth; Heaven and earth are full of the majesty: of thy glory.

The glorious company of the apostles: praise thee.

The goodly fellowship of the prophets: praise thee.

The noble army of martyrs: praise thee.

The holy church throughout all the world: doth acknowledge thee: The Father: of an infinite majesty; Thine honourable, true: and only Son; Also the Holy Ghost: the Comforter.

Thou art the King of Glory: O Christ.

Thou art the everlasting Son: of the Father.

When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.

When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death: thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

Thou sittest at the right hand of God: in the glory of the Father.

We believe that thou shalt come: to be our Judge.

We therefore pray thee, help thy servants: whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.

Make them to be numbered with thy saints:in glory everlasting.

O Lord, save thy people: and bless thine heritage.

Govern them: and lift them up for ever.

Day by day: we magnify thee; And we worship thy name: ever world without end.

Latin, 4th c., translation from the Book of Common Prayer (without the final verses)

Biographies Bristol Choral Society is known as one of the leading large choirs in the UK. Established in 1889, the choir has an auditioned membership of around 130 singers and has flourished under the leadership of award-winning Musical Director, Hilary Campbell. Members are drawn from Bristol and the surrounding area, encompassing all ages and walks of life. The choir stages at least four classical choral concerts each season with professional orchestras and soloists.

The choir’s repertoire ranges from major traditional choral works to the contemporary.

After winning the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Award for Inspiration in 2021 the choir were invited by the RPS, supported by the Vaughan Williams Foundation, to perform the world premiere of A Memory of the Ocean by the young composer Grace-Evangeline Mason.

In 2020 the choir made its first recording with Delphian Records, The Big Picture, of works by Cecilia McDowall, Bob Chilcott and Judith Weir.

Bristol Choral Society is proud of its long history and contribution to the musical and cultural life of Bristol and the wider region over the last 130 years, and aims to actively encourage the next generation in the pursuit of singing and music as well as supporting aspiring young professional singers through the choir’s Choral Scholar scheme.

Hilary Campbell is a freelance choral specialist, and is founder and Musical Director of professional choir Blossom Street, and Musical Director of Bristol Choral Society, West London Chorus and West London Chamber Choir. Her project work includes guest conducting ensembles such as the BBC Singers, Trinity Laban Chamber Choir and the Fourth Choir, and chorus mastering the BBC Symphony Chorus and Royal Academy of Music Symphony Chorus. She is Associate Conductor of Ex Cathedra, and runs choral workshops for the Royal Opera House. In 2021, Hilary was delighted to be awarded Making Music’s prize of Best Vocal Group Musical Director, and she and Bristol Choral Society were jointly awarded the RPS Inspiration Award.

Hilary gained a Distinction for an MMus in Choral Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music; she was also awarded the three choral conducting prizes. Following her studies, she returned to the RAM as the Meaker Fellow, the first choral conductor to have been thus honoured. In 2018, Hilary was thrilled to be made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. In addition to her regular conducting work, Hilary also acts as an adjudicator, workshop leader and guest conductor. She is a published and prize-winning composer, and with Blossom Street has released several award-winning recordings on the Naxos label.

Biographies Soprano Charlotte Mobbs graduated from the Welsh College of Music and Drama in 1997 and continued her studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

She now enjoys a career as a soloist and ensemble singer performing with many of the UK’s finest conductors all over the world.

Solo performances include Bach St Matthew Passion at Cadogan Hall, Magnificat and cantatas at the Royal Festival Hall under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Vespers at the Barbican, Galatea in Handel Acis and Galatea at The Foundling Museum under Harry Christophers, Dixit Dominus with The Sixteen and Messiah at the Bridgewater Hall and Royal Festival Hall under David Hill. Charlotte also performed the world premiere of the concert version of Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light – A Requiem at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

Recordings include the role of Mermaid in Weber’s Oberon on Decca and many solo and consort recordings on the Coro label. Television appearances include Howard Goodall’s Great Dates and How Music Works, Charles Hazlewood’s The Birth of British Music and the BBC’s Sacred Music with The Sixteen.

Neil Brough is Principal Trumpet with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the English Chamber Orchestra. He is also renowned as one of the finest exponents of the baroque trumpet and historical performance on original

instruments, being also the principal trumpet of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the English Baroque Soloists, with whom Neil played at the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III. His concert performances take him all over the world from Carnegie Hall New York, through Europe, to Sydney Opera House. He has appeared on many classical recordings, Hollywood movies and television soundtracks.

Jo Harris is a characterful trumpet player drawn to expressive solo repertoire spanning from Monteverdi to Maxwell Davies. A recipient of the prestigious Park Lane Group Award following her graduation from the Royal Academy, she finds inspiration from working closely with living composers. Jo has premiered new works by luminaries such as Camille Pepin and Betsy Jolas in the Royal Albert Hall and Diana Burrell at Norwich Cathedral. Her recordings include Judith Bingham’s virtuosic solo piece, Enter Ghost.

Jo’s innovative programming has earned her recognition from the International Trumpet Guild and Making Music, who have twice presented her with the Recommended Artist Award. Notable orchestral engagements include Principal Trumpet in Elena Langer’s chamber opera Rhondda Rips it Up! for Welsh National Opera and touring Europe with Sir

John Eliot Gardiner performing Verdi’s epic Requiem.

Jo premiered Howard Goodall’s Unconditional Love with her brass ensemble Bella Tromba and the BBC Singers, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. She has fostered partnerships with the Royal Opera House, presenting educational concerts, and delivering pop-up shows for Classic FM. Jo is both a Van Laar Artist and a Denis Wick Artist; these beautiful instruments and mutes enable her to create a colourful, unique voice.

Raymond Warren’s Hardy Portraits, of which he was the dedicatee, and in 2021 he made a recording of new piano pieces by Kevin Figes for an album released on Pig Records.

Steven is in demand as an accompanist to choirs, vocal soloists, and instrumentalists. His output as a composer includes several works for piano, of which a set of miniatures entitled Fractions & Muscles is a current ongoing project.

Named a ‘rising star’ by The Strad magazine, Evva Mizerska is an award-winning cellist, Pianist Steven Kings received his musical recitalist and chamber musician. A highly training at St John’s College, Cambridge and sought-after performer, she has appeared in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, the has performed around the country as a soloist, Purcell Room (Queen Elizabeth Hall), and St accompanist and chamber musician, with a George’s Bristol. As well as other performances wide solo repertoire ranging from Scarlatti across the world she has given live broadcasts to Ligeti and beyond. He has appeared as for BBC Radio3 and Polish radio. the piano soloist in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Born in Poland, Evva graduated from the Concerto and Choral Fantasia, Gershwin’s Frédéric Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.

Rhapsody in Blue, and Lambert’s Rio Grande.

She later completed the MMus studies at Trinity College of Music in London, where she His 2009 recording of piano music by John Pitts studied with Richard Markson. She has also received a four-star review in the Independent, received tuition from Yonty Solomon, Bernard while MusicWeb International described Greenhouse, Raphael Sommer and Erling his playing as ‘stunning […] authoritative Blöndal Bengtsson. Evva has been awarded and tremendously agile’. His performance numerous prizes, including the First Prize at of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in the 7th International Leoš Janáček Competition the 2010 Bristol Cathedral Summer Festival in Brno, the Vivian Joseph Cello Prize and the was reviewed as ‘an excellently controlled Leonard Smith Duo Prize in London. performance with some scintillating playing’.

Evva lives in London. Her chamber music In 2016 he gave the world premiere of partners include pianist Emma Abbate and the

Biographies Veles Ensemble (a string trio, of which she is a founding member) as well as Zemlinsky Trio with Emma Abbate and clarinettist Peter Cigleris. Evva has released numerous recordings for her label Toccata Classics as well as for Naxos and DUX. Richard Moore is Sub-Organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, where he plays for the Cathedral liturgies. He read Music as Organ Scholar of St John’s College, Oxford, after which he took up a place at the Royal College of Music, studying Organ with David Graham. In 2013 he graduated from the MMus degree with distinction, attaining the Walford Davies prize in organ performance.

Richard held the William and Irene Miller Organ Scholarship at St Paul’s Cathedral for two years,

Bristol Choral Society where, in addition to playing for services and training choristers, he also played at a number of important occasions, including the funeral of Baroness Thatcher. In August 2017 Richard took up the post of Sub Organist at Guildford Cathedral, where he articulated the day-to-day liturgies of the Cathedral. In 2017 together with trumpeter Ellie Lovegrove he released a recording, Illuminations, Dances, and Poems, which received 4 stars in Organists Review. Richard continues his studies with Bine Katrine Bryndorf, and holds the Soloist Diploma of the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he was hailed as ‘a smouldering musician, with incredible rhythmic precision’.

In March 2023 he released the premiere recording of Philip Moore’s devotional sequence, Via Crucis.

Soprano 1 Felicity Brock Olly Caldecott Cynthia Dobson Kate Floyd Caroline Hanks Margaret Johnstone Maggie Leung Angela Markham Annette Milburn Dorette Morgan Helen Moss Martina Peattie Lindsay St Claire Abbie Walker Emily Wenman Lesley Wilson Soprano 2 Sarah Burns Emma Creasey Janis Fletcher Heather Holmes Rosie Howl Virginia Knight Barrie Lea Nia Morris Julia Mortimer Pamela Moult Anna Moxham Jean Norgate Julie Parker Maroussia Rochigneux Venetia Rodgers Maggie Whittle

Alto 1 Cathy Bedford Diane Blythe Geraldine Buchanan Vanessa Colley Amber Dennis Susanne Evans Miranda Hammick Sarah Kamm Sabine Klepsch Cynthia Loveless Claudia McConnell Ruth Pitter Anne Quinn Ginny Royston Maryon Shearman Alto 2 Caro Barrett Anth Bruges Arabella Butler Liz Elliott Susanne Frank Heather Harries Eveline Johnstone Becky Moloney Olivia Mullins Ros Sanders Phillips Thomas Valerie Williams Tenor 1 Helen Beek Robert Convey Joi Demery

Yvonne Ellis Richard Kamm Sue Otty Frances Roberts John Telfer Tenor 2 Nathan Gerby Robert Jenkins Mike Hurst Julian Rivers Lionel Rochigneux Bass 1 Stewart Black Chris Featherstone Luke Johnson John Sloman John Waldron Brian Watson Nick Weiner Lawrence White Aubrey Whittle Bass 2 Tim Barrett Keith Bignall Phil Coleman Jonny Davis David Rodgers Alan Singleton Nick Stephenson James Williams

Also available on Delphian The Big Picture: Chilcott – McDowall – Weir Bristol Choral Society, choirs and soloists / Hilary Campbell DCD34242

High in energy and rich in expression and range of subject matter, these three works for mixed choral and instrumental forces show contemporary British music at its most accessible and engaging. The massed forces of Bristol Choral Society are joined by a children’s choir – the stunning Bristol Youth Choir – and a solo soprano in Cecilia McDowall’s contemplation of the human lifespan and our place in the universe. Bob Chilcott brings to life the sights and sounds of London through the ages, while Judith Weir explores associations between colour and harmony in a recent work originally designed for performance in the newly redeveloped Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Richard Allain: Choral Music Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas DCD34207

Celebrating ten years since the inception of Merton College’s choral foundation, the choir’s seventh Delphian recording follows the themed anthologies which brought it such immediate critical acclaim with what will be the first in a series of close collaborations between the choir and individual living composers. Richard Allain writes music across a wide spectrum of genres; he and Benjamin Nicholas have put together a programme showcasing his oeuvre – from a setting of the Evening Canticles, animated then impassioned, to a sumptuous reimagining of the spiritual Don’t you weep when I am gone and Allain’s most performed work, the wedding anthem Cana’s Guest.

‘Hilary Campbell and her choirs give vivid and very well-prepared performances’ — MusicWeb International, October 2020

‘beautifully-shaped performances by a finely constituted and fearless mixed choir … The sound is rich and full, allowed to breathe in an ideal acoustic’ — BBC Music Magazine, October 2018

Judith Weir: Choral Music Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber

A Festival of Britten National Youth Choirs of Great Britain / Ben Parry et al.

DCD34095

DCD34133 (2 discs)

This first recording devoted entirely to Judith Weir’s choral music comprises her complete works to date for unaccompanied choir or choir with one instrument (trombone and marimba as well as the more usual organ). Tracking her evolving relationship with the medium from her earliest liturgical commission to the most recent, premiered in 2009, it also includes several secular pieces and her two solo organ works, which are now established classics of the repertoire. The athleticism, intensity and clarity that mark out Geoffrey Webber’s choir are ideally suited to Weir’s strikingly original, approachable and fascinating music.

The National Youth Choirs’ thirtieth birthday coincided with Britten’s centenary, and this double album was the result. Over the course of a year, Delphian engineers followed the various choirs on their courses, and all seven groups appear on disc for the first time here – six hundred singers, eight conductors, in three different venues. The vast range of Britten’s choral output encompasses work to match the character of each of the different choirs, from the fresh-faced eagerness of the Training Choirs to the maturity and sophistication of the elite Chamber Choir. The vocal discipline of all these singers, their energy and their sheer enthusiasm are vividly conveyed in this unique double birthday celebration.

‘The freshness and precision of Weir’s writing is perfectly matched by the well tuned, clearly articulated singing’ — BBC Music Magazine, December 2011, choral & song choice

‘the joy of fresh voices cleanly singing a generous cross-section of Britten’s output … With a master text-setter like Britten you don’t want the words obscured; luckily the disc’s various acoustics make his genius crystal-clear’ — The Times, November 2013

DCD34310