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Kenneth LEIGHTON (1929–1988)
Sacred Choral Works
Lift up your heads, O ye gates (1966) [4:07]
Awake my glory (1979) [11:31]
Wassail all over the town (Traditional Gloucestershire wassail, arr. Leighton, 1964?) [2:44]
Crucifixus pro Nobis (1961):
-     Christ in the Cradle [4:02]
-     Christ in the Garden [4:31]
-     Christ in his Passion [8:37]
-     Hymn (Drop, drop, slow tears) [3:18]
Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child (‘Coventry Carol’, pub. 1956) [3:20]
What love is this of thine? (1985) [6:46]
Of a rose is all my song (1970) [6:24]
O sacrum convivium (1975) [4:03]
Missa Sancti Petri (1987) [20:06]
Samuel Jenkins (tenor); Joseph Beech (organ);
Choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh/Duncan Ferguson
rec. 2019, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh
Includes premiere recordings.
Texts and translations included
Reviewed as 24/44.1 download with pdf booklet from chandos.net.
DELPHIAN DCD34218 [79:36]

Of the music on this new Delphian recording, only Crucifixus pro nobis is at all well known, with recordings from St John’s College, Cambridge with Christopher Robinson (Naxos 8.555795 – review), Trinity College, Cambridge, with Stephen Layton (Hyperion CDA68039 – review – review – DL News 2015/4), Wells Cathedral Choir with Matthew Owens (CDA67641 – review), and St Paul’s Cathedral, with John Scott (Hyperion Helios CDH55195).

Those all-Leighton recordings should be available to Leighton’s many admirers – of which I am, assuredly, one – but that should not deter you from obtaining the new album; there is so much on it that is not available elsewhere, with some of the music, including the Missa Sancti Petri, receiving its first recording. The Wells and St Paul’s recordings keep appearing among Hyperion’s least popular recordings, quite undeservedly but that means that they are regularly offered at attractive prices – see DL Roundup September 2011/2 – but I hope that doesn’t signify a general lack of interest in Leighton’s music.

CDH55195 is available for £6.50, on CD or as a lossless download, from hyperion-records.co.uk – here – CDA56641 for £5 – here – and CDA68039 for £6.50 (16-bit download or CD), £9.74 (24-bit) – here. The Naxos sells for around £7 on CD or £4 as a lossless download, so none of these earlier recordings should break the bank. Another very fine all-Leighton recording, now download-only or from the Archive Service as a CDR, comes from the Finzi Singers and Paul Spicer (Chandos CHAN9485, from chandos.net).

Delphian have already given us a very good recording of Leighton’s Mass – not the one included on the new recording – from King’s College, London (DCD34211, with Martin and Alain – review – review). I didn’t rate that as my first choice in either work – for Leighton that remains the Chandos – but it comes very close.

Leighton’s music can take some time to assimilate, but is well worth persevering with; though it stands in a clear line of descent from English choral music of earlier generation, even in joyful mode, as on the very first track, the Eastertide excerpt from Psalm 24, it can sound angular at first hearing. That’s quite a short piece, but the following Awake my glory gives the composer the chance to pull all the stops out, after a more restrained start – and there’s no-one who does the big choral moment better. The text is from the mystic Christopher Smart and the music captures the mood of the words splendidly. There’s just one alternative recording, on Lammas, which I haven’t heard; I doubt it’s at all superior to the new Delphian.

Leighton also does more approachable, as in his arrangement of the Gloucestershire Wassail on track 3, a first recording, like the Missa Sancti Petri which closes the programme. That’s a short setting of the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei from the more traditional of the modern Anglican versions, commissioned by Peterborough Cathedral in 1987. Short, but colourful and not the easiest work to sing, especially for the high voices, it receives a very convincing performance, marking it out as a real discovery. With fine recordings of some of the other music available, it was the Missa that tilted the balance in favour of making this a Recommended recording.

The Wassail is one of three pieces here for Christmas. The a cappella setting of Lully, lulla, which features on too many seasonal offerings to mention, receives a fine performance, with Olivia Massimo a fine, ethereal treble soloist.

Of a rose is all my song has been less often recorded, most recently on a Signum album A Rose Magnificat, where it opens the proceedings (Signum SIGCD536). That very fine recording from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort received the highest praise all round, not least here on MusicWeb – review – review – review. Duncan Ferguson and his Edinburgh team, with Nora Trew-Rae the fine treble soloist, give it a little more time to breathe, but I’d be hard put to it to choose between the two recordings. The Signum contains much more very fine music – I seriously considered it for Recording of the Month – and is well worth having in addition to the new Delphian. If you download both – the Signum from hyperion-records.co.uk, the Delphian from chandos.net – you need not end up bankrupt.

Crucifixus pro nobis is not, as one might expect, a setting of those words from the Latin creed, but a series of meditations, settings of poems by the C17 poet Patrick Carey on the Nativity, the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion, rounded off with a setting of the metaphysical poem Drop, drop, slow tears, by Phineas Fletcher. The metaphysical poets may be less popular now than when I read English, almost 60 years ago, but the sentiments are surely abiding, with their intention of absorbing the reader or hearer in the events leading up to the Passion, and the same is true of Leighton’s setting.

Samuel Jenkins is the tenor soloist on whom so much depends in this work and he makes a strong showing; it’s appropriate that Delphian have singled him and organist Joseph Beech out in their credits. Overall, this powerful work receives a striking performance, to match the others which I listed earlier. Here again, the Edinburgh team give the music more space than, for example, St John’s on that very fine Naxos recording; if anything, the more meditative approach works slightly better. Yet, though the difference is pronounced in Drop, drop, slow tears (3:18 against 2:18 – that’s not a typo), there’s no sense of undue haste from Christopher Robinson on Naxos. The Finzi singers on Chandos fall between these two interpretations in terms of tempo. I can’t nominate a ‘best buy’; all three convey the sentiments of the words and music so well. On that subject, as is so often the case, I recommend shopping around for the new album on CD; even between the two purchase links above, there is a considerable price difference as I write.

Everything on the new Delphian release is well recorded, especially as heard in 24-bit sound, and the notes in the booklet are informative and helpful. If anything, this is an even greater tribute to Leighton in the ninetieth anniversary year of his birth than the earlier Delphian, good as that was. Do explore those other recordings that I have mentioned, if you don’t already have one or more of them, but add the new album, or even start to get to know Leighton from it. And don’t forget his orchestral music, from Chandos in particular; Leighton’s music really does deserve to be much better known.

Brian Wilson