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The music composed for New College Choir in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries provides a compelling historical tour of changing musical styles and liturgical practices. On this disc we survey New College commissions from the 1920s to the 2020s, beginning with William Harris’s evergreen Faire is the heaven, composed while he was Organist of New College, and ending with two recent commissions from Caitlin Harrison and Deborah Pritchard.  The disc is built round three settings of the Evensong canticles, by Paul Drayton, Herbert Howells, and Deborah Pritchard.  For Kenneth Leighton’s heart-wrenching cantata Crucifixus pro nobis, written in 1961, the choir is joined by tenor Nick Pritchard, a former academical clerk at New College. 

Release Date:  10 June 2022

Dónal McCann releases his debut CD of Concerto transcriptions by J. S. Bach and his contemporary J. G. Walther.  This is the first solo organ recording on the Novum label and showcases the iconic New College organ.

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This debut release with Linn Records features the works of the English Renaissance composer John Sheppard, including his most celebrated work, Media Vita, and four motets which receive their premiere recordings.

New College Choir was already 150 years old when Sheppard arrived in Oxford. His boundary-pushing polyphony requires the skill and precision of liturgical professionals, and under Robert Quinney’s direction the choir gives compelling performances. Described by Linn Records as ‘another distinctive and stylish performance from this acclaimed choir’, this disc marks the first in a new series of recordings for the Linn label.

Sunday Times: best 3 new releases 18 October 2020

John Sheppard: Media Vita/Choir of New College, Oxford/Quinney; Linn Records CKD 632
‘These seven beguiling pieces by John Sheppard were written late in his career, in Mary Tudor’s reign.  Four receive significant first recordings.  And the immense hymn setting Media vita makes for a glorious finale. Robert Quinney shapes graceful performances, with Sheppard’s often dense textures never feeling congested, and the New College boys’ sound is pleasingly open and natural.’ Stephen Pettitt, The Sunday Times, 18 October 2020

Click on the link below to listen to a track from the Album.

Selected as one of the top releases in the December issue of Gramophone in 2020: click on the link below to read the full review. 

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Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) was a dominant force in British music-making in the four decades between the premiere of Prometheus Unbound in 1879 and his death in October 1918. His music, with that of his contemporary Charles Villiers Stanford, brought his native land into the European musical mainstream, through its assimilation of continental—specifically German—models.

This disc situates Parry’s music in its European context. Parry was a social and political liberal, and crucially—like all the leading British musicians of his time—his horizons extended beyond the island of his birth. His late set of six motets, Songs of Farewell, are among his greatest achievements in any musical genre, demonstrating his capacity for deeply affecting introspection. In this recording, they are prefaced by another sextet: the pithy Sechs Sprüche by Mendelssohn, which make clear the debt Parry owed to his continental forebears and contemporaries.

Moreover, this recording presents, for the first time, an early version of ‘There is an old belief’, edited by Robert Quinney from the autograph manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library and a printed proof copy. The compositional history of the motet is unclear, but the evidence suggests Parry vacillated between two strikingly different versions of the section ‘serene in changeless prime’ until shortly before publication.

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The revival of British music in the late nineteenth century coincided with two profound religious changes: the so-called Oxford Movement, the influence of which on standards of liturgy and music in the Church of England reached far beyond the ‘Anglo-Catholic’ churches it spawned; and the Roman Catholic Church, whose presence in the religious and cultural life of the country had grown since its emancipation in 1829. The musical influence of the latter was, by the turn of century, focussed on the new Westminster Cathedral, whose first public liturgies were held in 1903, featuring both plainchant and a good deal of polyphonic music of the sixteenth century - much of the latter heard for the first time since the Reformation.

Meanwhile, the standard of music in the Anglican Cathedrals and collegiate foundations was improving, following reforms to choir schools and professional singers’ terms; and the influence of contemporary continental European music and education, seen in the foundation of the Royal College of Music in 1882, equipped a new generation of composers with a methodical and comprehensive training. These various influences may be detected in the repertoire presented on this disc.

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The words of Psalm 42, at once desperate and yet full of yearning for God’s presence and love, are the recurring theme of Catherine Clover's novel The Templar’s Garden. But is it possible to create an album of the same text without each track sounding as if it is on a continual loop? In fact, it is. As the listener will hear, each composer has his own distinct way of setting the psalm. From plainchant, to unaccompanied and accompanied motets, to hymns, the words and melodies flow gracefully from one into the next, creating a seamless progression of styles covering nearly six centuries of  musical composition without a hint of repetition. Some composers highlight the pathos in the opening verses; others take a more upbeat approach; while others plot a course from desolation to hope.

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A Novum charity release in aid of Sarcoma UK
The Rose Singers
Conductor Peter Foggitt
Organist Paul Plummer

" This outstanding recording, made by singers who loved and respected him...makes an uplifting and poignant tribute "

Observer, 23 April 2017

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William Petter was a Chorister with New College Choir, and thereafter maintained a long relationship with New College, its choir and its school. The compelling body of sacred choral works left at his death in October 2016, presented here, reveals a distinctive personal idiom influenced by a deep connection with the European choral tradition via his rigorous choral training, and his natural tendency towards romantic intensity and a deeply expressive performance style. The St. Magnus Mass for six unaccompanied voices calls to mind stylistic traits of Frank Martin, Walton and Kodály, and Leonard Bernstein; while the Vigil Mass places the plainsong Missa de Angelis alongside a richly-varied organ texture. The three motets show further aspects of the composer's aesthetic in writing both for large-scale choral forces and for a more intimate dynamic.

Recorded in the beautiful acoustic of the Chapel of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, Ablaze with Light is performed by musicians who represent many of London and the UK's finest chamber choirs and vocal ensembles. All close friends of William, the choir was hand-picked by the composer, and the disc recorded just two weeks after his death. All proceeds from this recording will go to Sarcoma UK.

Recorded in New College Chapel,
Oxford, December 2015
Released November 2016
Novum: NCR 1390

" model of how a traditional choral foundation should sound" - William Gatens 
American Record Guide, Dec 2017
 

This recording follows the trajectory of the last weeks of Michaelmas term at New College. On Advent Sunday (at the very end of November or just into December), the chapel is packed with members of college, alumni, families and visitors, for the annual Advent service. Over the following week we move at high speed – we haven’t the luxury of four weeks of Advent to explore its rich themes in much detail – and arrive in the second week of December, more-or-less in the season of Christmas. This artificial compression of proper liturgical time makes sense within the life and community of an Oxford college, since by the third week of December, almost all the students have gone down, and the fellows are deep into interviews and meetings for the admission of next year’s students. And, in any case, out in the ‘real world’ the Christmas decorations have been twinkling for weeks already... 

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"All the works are given splendid performances which not only remind us that there is more to Blow than merely being Purcell’s mentor but also confirm that New College’s famous choir is in very good hands." - David Vickers
Gramophone Magazine, September 2016

"It's wond