Yesterday the Choir was up early for a trip to BBC Television Centre in London, for we would be performing live on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1. Choristers and choral scholars gave a performance of John Rutter's The Lord bless you and keep you following brief interviews with director Edward Higginbottom and one of the choristers. Later on in the day it was announced that our new album Illumina: Music of Light had debuted at #6 in the UK classical charts - so a good day all round! Below are some photos from our studio visit.

Where did it all start?  Well before Luther pinched 'Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen' (a secular love song) for a German chorale, which subsequently became the linchpin for the St Matthew Passion.  Gounod certainly added to the tradition by adapting Bach's keyboard prelude in C, and making of it an Ave Maria.  And Barber confidently added religious words to his Adagio for Strings.  What about Mahler and his Adagietto?  Perhaps the first thing to say is that the original Adagietto has not somehow been smothered by making of it a choral arrangement.  It is still there.  The next thing to say is that when composers launch their works on the world, they begin to say goodbye to them.  And 75 years after their death they can exercise no further control.  Their music then enters the 'public domain'.   So we are certainly allowed to view them in new ways.  And this we have done in singing Mahler's Fifth Symphony Adagietto to the text 'Ave Maria'.  Mahler would have been surprised, I've no doubt.  But as a composer who adopted the hymn Veni creator spiritus in his Eighth Symphony, he was not unfamiliar with Christian texts, and their meanings.  The question is does such a setting undermine the effect of Mahler's music?  Or does it add a possible new layer of identity on the movement?  For you the listener to decide.  What we can be sure of is that a very present and familiar musical figure of our own time, Barrington Pheloung, has been very happy to have his music transformed, here as a setting of the Gaelic Blessing (in Latin of course to reflect Inspector Morse's leaning towards the classics!).  Enjoy!  If you like that sort of thing of course...

* One music critic felt ill when listening to the Mahler arrangement.  Our audiences have however uniformly liked it.  De gustibus non est disputandum.

Former chorister Francis Pott’s new CD, In the Heart of Things, recorded by Commotio and Matthew Berry for Naxos, has achieved great things since its release less than a month ago, entering the classical charts and climbing as high as the no.6 position.  A stunning launch concert given by Commotio drew a large and extremely appreciative audience, and the CD has gone on to attract some fantastic reviews.

Edmund Finnis, another former New College chorister, is premièring his new work 'Relative Colour' for string septet at Carnegie Hall in New York City on 12 March 2012. You can read more about it on his blog.  

International relationships is rather a grand term to use when describing a visit to a provincial town near Brussels.  Perhaps 'cultural relationships' would be better. And what are they?  How do we see ourselves as linked and yet different?  How do these 'others' (to use an ethnomusicological term) sound, what are their behaviours, their conditions of work, their aspirations?  All good questions, but ones I intend to duck in order to get to a more important part of the experience: a better understanding of what we do ourselves by interrogating the differences we observe. I recall very clearly the insights I gained into my own work in the UK through a prolonged period of association with French children's choirs.  In the same way, a visit to Aalst, combining our voices with the Cantate Domino singers, threw things into relief.  There was a level of personal commitment, a graciousness, a spirit that informed the work of this Belgium Choir that clearly told us that expertise was just one constituent of a successful ensemble.  

On another note, within the geographical framework of mainland Europe, and a concert given on the weekend of Armistice, there was a consciousness of the sacrifices of war that felt very palpable.  The European vision that was more about making further European conflict impossible than about creating a single currency was write large over the concert we gave, and the performance of Fauré's Requiem.  Watch this video to get closer to that phenomenon, as at the same time you experience two choirs singing together.  Separately they sound quite different;  together they reveal themselves as a perfectly cohesive single ensemble.  We thank David de Geest and his singers of Aalst for their generous welcome, and for their contribution to our own identity.

Following BBC Radio 3's selection of our most recent release 'Exultent Superi' as their 'CD of the Week' in November 2011, New College soloists have received another outstanding review for this collection of François Couperin motets – some of which are recorded for the first time. An extract from the five star review, which appears in the March edition of BBC Music Magazine is included below:

'The performance is astonishing. Two New College trebles, aged 11 and 13, sing with a musical maturity and technical focus which I have never heard bettered. Intonation is spot on, with none of that instability (for some winsome, for others unnerving) which often characterises unbroken boys' voices. In the duet 'Lauda Sion Salvatorem' their individually distinctive voices are beautifully matched. No less exceptional is the haute-contre (light high tenor) of Guy Cutting[...] With excellent strings and sympathetic recording this is a real revelation.'   
 ***** Performance; **** Recording 
George Pratt, BBC Music Magazine

The album can be viewed here. 

Update 24/02/12: Exultent Superi wins more critical acclaim from MusicWeb International, who have named the release their 'Recording of the Month'. They say:

'The crystal clear and superbly balanced sound quality is as pleasing as I have heard in a church acoustic. It would be hard to imagine a more gratifying recording of these scores. In all respects this Novum release is quite stunning!'
Read the review here.

Added to our collection of webcasts from the term just finished is the Service of Readings and Music for the Season of Christmas - over an hour's worth of carols, motets and readings as performed in New College Chapel recently. This means you can now listen to pieces by Benjamin Britten, Andrew Carter, Anton Bruckner, Morten Lauridsen and many more, as well as all the readings and prayers, in the comfort of your own home. We recommend digging out some headphones though if you don't have good speakers as it'll sound at its best that way! You can also read the service booklet.

_ This week the BBC features our new Francois Couperin recording as 'CD of the week'.  This is welcome recognition of the delight the recording will give to many who had never thought of themselves as afficionados of French baroque music.  Couperin's style is extremely accessible, and genial.  It will make excellent Christmas listening when you have tired of carols.  The CD also contains works never before recorded, and which are now performable through the reconstructions made by Edward Higginbottom, an expert in the field of French baroque music.  There are additional pluses to this release: the focus in the digipack on illustrations of College art treasures, and the musical focus on the young soloists of the choir, who sing this music with no less precision and style than seasoned professionals. 

St Cecilia’s Day: 22 November. We celebrate it by singing Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia at evensong (Benjamin Britten himself was born on 22 November). New College Chapel has a permanent reminder of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. If you walk towards the altar, halfway along on the south side, and on the lower set of lights, you will see a woman playing a lute – not of course the organ with which the saint is ordinarily associated. The colours of the window (by William Price) are a combination of reds, blues and greens with the lute showing a rich brown. Here St Cecilia takes her stand with many other of the great figures of the Church’s history, the patriachs and prophets, the St Catharines and Lucys.  

But the chapel iconography does not stop here. On the great east-wall reredos, St Cecilia stands there in stone, on the third gallery of statues, over to the left. She holds a portative organ, as almost invariably shown in early Renaissance pictorial representations.  ‘Sound the organ’ – Resonent organa – is the first line of the splendid motet to St Cecilia by Francois Couperin, newly reconstructed and now available on a remarkable New College CD of music by this the greatest of early 18th-century French composers. The CD case and booklet carry a number of images of New College, including both the representations of St Cecilia described above, Price’s window neatly contemporaneous with the music. These images bring Couperin’s works into relationship with the place that has now championed some of his best but also some of his least-known music. For the discerning, this CD will be a revelation, and a great gift. The Novum label continues its tradition of featuring the artworks of New College, as well as presenting the music of its world-class choir. Go to the Shop to order your copy now!

One of the things we can occasionally claim for members of New College Choir is a chance to spend Michaelmas halfterm not sweeping up the leaves at home, but making music in the sunshine, enjoying the ocean and culture of a Mediterranean island, and forgetting the Autumnal wind and rain.  And so it was with us at the end of October when we set sail for Cyprus: Monday through to Friday hardly a cloud, temperatures settled comfortably in the mid 20s, the sea warm, the people friendly, and the food excellent.  To this I must add the fine qualities of the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra with whom we had a project to perform Haydn's Creation (in Limassol and Nicosia).  I had (for a Brit) unheard-of-hours of rehearsal with the orchestra.  They were pleased to have this time, since it was for them a new work.  Apart from the music-making, we greatly appreciated our visit to Kourion and the extraordinary treasures of the Nicosia Archealogical Museum.  The Island of Cyprus possesses a richness and depth of history that makes Britain look like a parvenue. Part of this history has now torn the Island in two.  Turkey's entry into the EU might be a resolution, but Turkey's enthusiasm for such a move must be dampened by European sovereign debt: it wouldn't make that much sense to buy into a project which meant bailing out several other countries, including of course Greece.  We sang The Creation in English, making the point that the first edition (1800) of the work was bilingual, and that Haydn's intention was to have it sung in the local language, having conceived  the work in England and written it in Austria. We didn't contemplate a Greek version - and English is well understood, from the time of the British colonization, and now the Americanization of the world.  We were able still to admire the old British pillar boxes (marked GR), now in yellow, and drive on the left side of the road.  It was curious to feel so much at home, and yet be a stone's throw from the Middle East.