This latest release from Novum is a CD of motets by François Couperin (1668-1733), the greatest figure in the French musical scene of the early 18th century. Everybody knows his fabulous harpsichord pieces, few his equally fabulous motets. Why? Many of them were effectively lost for over 200 years, and some have survived only in incomplete form. As a result, the motets are a sorely neglected part of his output. This New College release puts that right. Something like half the CD is of music never before recorded. The incomplete sources – violin parts lost soon after composition – have been reconstituted here by Edward Higginbottom, musicologist as well as Director of New College Choir.

The CD features solo voices from New College Choir, including two exceptional trebles and a real haute-contre, together with an instrumental ensemble of distinguished baroque players. The whole ensemble is directed from the keyboard by Edward Higginbottom.

We have just returned from Umbria, where the Choir gave two very different concerts in the context of the Festival of Musica Sagra Umbra.  In San Gemini, an eleventh-century jewel of a church, we performed Purcell, Locke and Couperin with a second half celebrating transatlantic connections: Lauridsen, Ives, Stravinsky, Bernstein (the rarely heard Missa Brevis).  Bernstein, whose music was a special focus of the Festival, featured also in the second concert, his Chichester Psalms, coupled with the Three Meditations for Orchestra and Cello.  This concert, in the magnificent basilica of San Pietro in Perugia, fell on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  The performance was dedicated to the memory of those killed in the attack on the Twin Towers.  In the second half of the concert, the Choir sang the Fauré Requiem as a commemorative act.  We were joined by the excellent Camerata Strumentale 'Citta di Prato'.  Both concerts were rapturously received by the Italians.  All along, we were stunned by the beauty of the Umbrian landscape, under a cloudless sky, with temperatures soaring to 30+. What we saw in Italian paintings and what we saw in the real landscape seemed not to differ in any respect: the intense slanting light of early evening, filtered by Roman pines and cyprus trees, against broken rock faces and ruddy sandy soils.  The choristers' eyes were also fixed on gelati: their Italian vocab audibly improved in the area of icecream flavours.

In this week's New CD Show on Classic FM, presenter David Mellor has chosen our latest release on the Novum label - Mozart's Requiem - as his 'Connoisseur's Choice'. He notes that the album appears on our new own-label, as well as featuring all male soloists taken from the Choir, including treble soloist Jonty Ward, who appeared in this year's Proms.  

You can listen to the album's appearance on Classic FM's listen again player from about 42 minutes in. The Requiem disc is available in our online shop.

Tune in to BBC Radio 3 on Sunday 28 August at 7pm for a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, with Paul McCreesh directing massed choirs and the Gabrieli Consort and Players. In the cameo part of the Angel is Jonty Ward, who has just completed his last year as head chorister in the New College choir. If you miss the live performance, you can read more about the Gabrieli Elijah recording in which Ward also takes part: http://www.gabrieli.com/support-us

Ward also sings the soprano solos in New College Choir's recently released recording of Mozart's Requiem as well as a number of upcoming discs on the Novum label.

Update 30/08/11: A couple of very positive reviews from the Guardian and The Arts Desk describe New College treble Jonty Ward's 'effortless' solos as 'perfectly voiced' winning 'the most admirers'. You can read the reviews in their entirety here:
http://bit.ly/owQu5B (Guardian)
http://bit.ly/ndPN0F (The Arts Desk)

Back in May we announced the first ever occasion that all the New College Choir discs were available to view in the same place - on our Facebook page. This was the first step in the process of making our entire discography available to view.

We sell a lot of our discs through our shop, but these only represent around half of what we've recorded; up until now there has been no public catalogue of all 110+ New College discs.

From today this comprehensive list is now live on our website. You can sort by composer, name or release date, or you can view all the album artwork in high resolution on the album covers page. You can still view high resolution scans of album backs (including LPs) but these remain exclusive to our Facebook page.

Just as important is the history of recording at New College and a page dedicated to our own label Novum; neither of these is entirely new, but both have been updated, given more prominence and separated from the shop.

We hope this long-overdue section will be of interest and a useful reference point - do let us know what you think in the comments!

In this month's Gramophone Podcast, Martin Cullingford talks to director Edward Higginbottom about our new label Novum! It includes a short extract from our new disc, Mozart's Requiem, and you can skip straight to the interview with Professor Higginbottom by going to 15:45 in the player window.

You can listen to it here: http://gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/download-the-latest-gramophone-podcast-1

A meeting of four choirs is one better than three (sorry Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford!).  And this great event happened on 15 June to mark Ralph Allwood's final term as Precentor of Eton College.  The combination of the choirs of King's Cambridge, New College Oxford, Eton College and Winchester College didn't arise out of the blue.  These four institutions have since the 1440s been signed up to an amicabilis concordia, an agreement promising mutual support in times of hardship.  Fashioned to help the relatively new institutions survive the upheavals of 15th-century England, the concordia has not been tested in recent times, and it is indeed doubtful that its provisions would withstand modern implementation, let alone the scrutiny of the charity commissioners.  The agreement does however have a vestige in the occasional meeting of the four institutions to make music.  Vestige may not be the right word for the resultant sound of some 70 trebles plus a similar number of men singing Parry's 'I was glad'. It was a knock-out moment, which had even Ralph Allwood, the conductor for the event, reeling.  It was also a pleasure socially, once evensong was over, to meet up with singers from as far away as East Anglia.  Those who attended the service will long remember it, and, it has to be said, for some fabulous pianissimos as well as overwhelming fortissimos.  It was a wonderfully appropriate way of marking Ralph Allwood's retirement from Eton (but certainly not from the world of music-making).  His contribution to church music through the Eton choral courses, and the exceptionally fine choral traditions of Eton College, has arguably been the most significant of any in the training of young singers.  

Edward Higginbottom

The amicabilis concordia (friendly agreement) between Eton College, King’s College Cambridge, Winchester College and New College Oxford was signed on 1st July 1444. The relationship between Winchester and New College was the model for that between Eton and King’s, and several of those involved in founding Eton College had been at Winchester.

The four colleges pledged to assist and support each other in ‘actions, lawsuits and controversies’ as well as in a more general way, though the agreement specifies that any costs involved were to be ‘reasonable and necessary’. This was a formal document, with the four colleges’ seals affixed. 

Previous joint Evensongs held at Eton College took place in 1968 and 2005; this coming Wednesday 15 June the choirs of the four institutions get together in honour of Ralph Allwood, departing precentor of Eton College.

Update 24/06/11: See some of our photos from the event on our blog post here

This release was officially launched today and to mark the occasion was played on BBC's 'In Tune' this evening. It is available to buy from our shop - and you can read a special blog post about different versions of the Mozart Requiem here.

"Another Mozart Requiem?  Surely not!"  A somewhat negative view, and not one anybody interested in New College Choir would have, I'm sure.  If we followed its implication ("we have enough versions already"), then there would be no further recordings of any Beethoven symphonies, or piano sonatas, or Wagner operas, or Rachmaninov piano concertos, etc, etc.  The rising generation of musicians would be told: "Thank you very much, but we are not really interested in what you have to say about these works: we prefer to live with the performances we know – we like living in the past."  That's not what New College intends to do!  All the same, there has to be something new and distinctive about a recording of a warhorse.  And there certainly is with the New College version of the Mozart Requiem.  Let's start with the fact that it is sung by a choir of boys and men; let's go on to say that the solos are sung by voices from this choir, and that the ages of these singers range from 12 to 22.  Not possible you say.  Buy it and see whether it's possible!  You will be impressed by a level of accomplishment wholly matching a team of seasoned professionals.  But what you also get is a coherence of sound and approach between choir and soloists rarely heard in such performances.  And this would have been a circumstance well-known to Mozart, who only months before his death had been offered the post of Kappellmeister at St Stephen's Cathedral Vienna.  When you add to the above the contribution of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, there is a very special conjunction of talent and style.  So, that's why it's been worth recording Mozart's Requiem another time.  And this version is worth catching up with.


Available here: http://www.newcollegechoir.com/mozart-requiem-recordings.html

Edward Higginbottom

"This anthology of folksong contains a representative selection of the genre from both sides of the Atlantic. Some of the arrangements are well-known, other have been made especially for this recording."

We are delighted that Warner Classics have decided to reissue Early One Morning, unobtainable for some time now despite numerous requests! Here it is again, albeit with a much more 'contemporary' cover...

It is now available again to buy directly from us from our shop.

For a limited time, here's a bonus sample track - Down by the Sally Gardens, arranged by Edward Higginbottom:

Available at: http://www.newcollegechoir.com/early-one-morning-recordings.html