IN EVERY CORNER
SING
The Abbey Singers/Elizabeth
Lamb
Details from Peter Bowyer,
tel +44 (0)1228 536146
I have written before of the well balanced, musicianly work of the Carlisle-based
Abbey Singers and their latest (1999) CD is once again a delight. All but
five of the 22 tracks are British, a judicious mixture of sacred and secular.
Some are well known, like Charles Wood's O Thou the Central Orb,
which recalls Parry's grand manner, the title song (Vaughan Williams'
Antiphon) and the snippet from Rutter's Magnificat,
but new to me were the appealingly simple O For a Closer Walk with God,
Ian Hare's slightly chromatic, attractively direct O God Thou Art
My God and The God of Love, a vocal version of Thalben Ball's
beautiful Elegy, made by Andrew Seivewright, the Singers' founder.
Hare is the organ accompanist here and he is given a solo, Stanford's
Postlude in D minor. Several of the secular pieces are folk songs (Vaughan
Williams and Bantock are among the arrangers). Finzi is
represented, marvellously, by two contrasting songs to Robert Bridges' words,
I Praise the Tender Flower and the popular My Spirit Sang All
Day. One of Moeran's Songs of Springtime runs them close
in its bibulous way. Fresh light is shed on two much set poems by Hugh
Roberton's In Summertime on Bredon and Michael Hurd's
Orpheus with his Lute. The sprightly accompaniment to the latter is
played by Helen Snowball, who is also accorded a solo, Elgar's
Idylle.
This is a delicious disc which should bring much pleasure to lovers of British
choral miniatures.
Philip Scowcroft
