MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively Crotchet   AmazonUK   AmazonUS

 

Divine Hymns
Henry PURCELL (1659-1695)
Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei (c.1680) [5:34]
Lord, what is man? Z192 (1693) [6:00]
Hosanna to the highest, Z187 [3:33]
The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation, 'Tell me, some pitying Angel' Z196 (1693) [7:09]
Since God so tender a regard Z143 [4:21]
Funeral Sentences for the death of Queen Mary II; In the midst of Life Z17 and Thou know’st, Lord (before 1682) [5:17]
O all ye people, clap your hands Z138 (c.1680) [2:53]
Saul and the Witch of Endor, 'In guilty night' Z134 (1693) [9:33]
The night is come [3:33]
Close thine eyes and sleep secure Z184 (1688)
An Evening Hymn on a Ground, 'Now that the sun hath veil'd his light' Z193 (1688) [4:22]
William CROFT (1678-1727)
Hymn on Divine Music, 'What art thou'  (1714) [5:07]
John BLOW (1649-1708)
Peaceful is he, and most secure (1688) [2:36]
Salvator mundi [3:13]
Pelham HUMPHREY (1647-1674)
Lord! I have sinned [2:40]
Wilt thou forgive that sin [2:50]
Paul Agnew (tenor)
Konstantin Wolff (bass)
Thomas Michael Allen (counter-tenor)
Hannah Morrison (soprano)
Claire Debono (soprano)
Elizabeth Kenny (theorbo)
Anne-Marie Lasla (viola da gamba)
Les Arts Florissants/William Christie (direction, organ, harpsichord)
rec. Eglise Evangélique Allemande, Paris, September 2006
VIRGIN CLASSICS 3951442 [72:02]
Experience Classicsonline


The disc’s private, devotional title indicates its scope. Most of the music is by Purcell though Blow, Humphrey and Croft are also included – the former two were a decade Purcell’s senior and Croft was one of his successors as organist at Westminster Abbey.
 
Most of the settings are in English though rather cleverly the disc begins and ends with two Latin motets, one by Purcell and the other by Blow. They introduce the full vocal ensemble - Paul Agnew (tenor), Konstantin Wolff (bass), Thomas Michael Allen (counter-tenor), Hannah Morrison and Claire Debono (sopranos), directed by William Christie who plays harpsichord and organ. Blow’s ethereal five-part motet, Salvator mundi, is especially beautiful. Throughout the disc we experience singing of great purity, spiritual refinement and beauty. Hannah Morrison, for instance, sings Croft’s What art thou? with real simplicity, dead centre of the note intonation, and tonal purity. She responds to the text, as do all the singers, with immediacy and surety.
 
Agnew’s urgent Hallelujahs in Purcell’s A Divine Hymn attest to his perceptive awareness of the work’s nourishment and succour – sung moreover with all his accustomed intelligence and stylistic intelligence. Thomas Michael Allen is listed as a countertenor but in something such as Pelham Humphrey’s Lord! I have sinned- and in fact throughout the disc - he actually sings high tenor, using the head voice in rather a French fashion. 
 
Claire Debono, Agnew, and Konstantin Wolff conjoin in a properly dramatic Saul and the Witch of Endor ('In guilty night'). Wolff’s is a strong and resilient presence and Agnew deploys very considerable vocal subtlety in delineating his part; Debono too. The notes link this florid scena quite explicitly to Charpentier but that may well be a reflection as much of Christie’s own stylistic imperatives and the French origin of those notes. Perhaps the most touching work here is Close thine eyes and sleep secure which is shared by Morrison and Wolff and beautifully, chastely done. And An Evening Hymn is sung by Hannah Morrison with exquisite, almost boyish purity.
 
If I can register a small troubling thought; whilst much of the singing and playing - Elizabeth Kenny (theorbo) and Anne-Marie Lasla (viola da gamba) – is truly lovely I did find myself rebelling against so much of it. An odd thought maybe but the refined purity seems to distance one from some of the more secular implications of the text. An Evening Hymn for instance, though beautifully accomplished, lacks the sense of intimacy and complexity set up in the opposition between body and soul that the text embodies. In my experience only a very few singers assume this burden of explication in their singing – Michael Chance prominently, whose understanding of the weight to be placed on the words “body”, “bed” and “soul” is unparalleled in my experience; his video performance, that is, not the recording now on Brilliant Classics.
 
Nevertheless I wouldn’t wish to characterise this disc as bloodless beauty. Its communicative powers are strong, the recording is first class and there are trilingual texts. I enjoyed it; but in truth I was seldom really moved.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.