Katherine Manley News
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2024-04-25
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2023-11-01 07:38:00
[…] of moods and movements, but always in exquisite good taste.The new works are carefully selected to sustain the meditative mood through the album, as might be expected with Apollo5's stated aim of creating “...a collection of aspirations for peace, rest and hope...”, with particular praise reserved for Paul Smith's new work Heaven-Haven, which uses searingly beautiful dissonances, and phrases that sigh into silence, to effectively and memorably set seafaring poems by George Herbert and Gerald Manley Hopkins. The two short pieces by Victoria Vita Polevá combine deceptively sweet harmonies with fresh modal inflections and extended chant-like melodic melismas to create fleeting moments of ethereal beauty.The one thing that's holding this album somewhat, is the choice of repertoire. Apollo5 deliver a beautiful, soulful performance of everything they present, but when this is applied to their own arrangements of Sarah McLachlan's ballad Angel, and the traditional tunes Wayfaring Stranger and Homeward Bound, […]
2022-06-06 06:38:32
Precious Things: a lovely survey of Bernard Hughes' recent choral music from Epiphoni Consort on Delphian
[…] and distinct texture, imitative polyphony, homophony dominated by melody, and strong block chords. And these also demonstrate that Hughes does not shy away from strong, discordant harmonies. Partly the sheer variety stems from Hughes' eclectic selection of texts. The title track Precious Things sets three texts by poet contemporaries of Hughes, Antony Dunn, Helen Eastman and Andrew George (two of whom Hughes knew at university). Elsewhere there is Michael Symmons Roberts, Kevin Crossley Holland, Vera Brittain, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Longfellow, Robert Herrick, and Shakespeare, plus the Bible. In I Sing of Love, written for Seattle Pro Musica in America in 2012, Hughes uses texts from Song of Solomon, the Islamic mystic Rumi, and I Corinthians. The sound world is some way towards a 21st century English part-song tradition, and you feel that such works as RVW's folk-song arrangements and Shakespeare songs are in the back of Hughes' cupboard along with other interesting English […]
2022-05-11 06:36:37
Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs, Dylan Perez & friends survey nearly 50 years of the composer's songs including those unpublished during his lifetime
[…] the mid 1920s (when he was in his teens) right through to 1972. In his style, he steered a steady and confident course, avoiding the fashionable modernisms that threaded their way through the 20th century but also avoiding the more jazz-inspired writing of his American contemporaries. These are well-made, striking songs with a highly intelligent response to text. And his selection of texts were wide with authors including James Stephens, A.E.Housman, James Joyce, Gerald Manley Hopkins, W.B.Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke (in French), Robert Graves, Matthew Arnold and of course the many anonymous texts in the Hermit Songs, and he even created a song out of a slice of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Perhaps the composer that Barber most resembled, when it came to his intelligent approach to texts, was Benjamin Britten. Bass William Thomas brings admirable firmness to Three Songs, Op.2, moving them away from the neo-folk idiom that they can often seem to […]
2020-07-21 07:45:16
Contemplative and contemporary: world premiere recording of Ian Venables's Requiem from Gloucester Cathedral
[…] to 1994, and the anthem Dedication is one of Sanders' last works, written for a wedding in 2003. This is followed by John Joubert's 2017 anthem O eternal God, written for Gloucester Cathedral Choir for its celebrations of Joubert's 90th birthday, and then Ivor Gurney's anthem God mastering me. Venables has long been an admirer of Gurney's music, though Gurney wrote little sacred music. God mastering me is a late work from 1920/21, setting Gerald Manley Hopkins, which was edited by Venables and premiered by Gloucester Cathedral Choir in 2015. The final work on the disc is fascinating, Venables first choral composition written in 1993, O Sing aloud to God. This is a far more traditional English anthem, by a composer who clearly knew work by composers like Joubert and William Mathias (who, I know, is Welsh). This is a lovely disc, and the work itself is highly practical […]