Category Archives: Choral

On Record – Havergal Brian: Complete Choral Songs, Volume Two (Toccata Classics)

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aJoyful Company of Singers / Peter Broadbent; bFinchley Children’s Music Group / Grace Rossiter with cGavin Roberts, dJohn Evanson (pianos)

Havergal Brian
Stars of the Summer Night (1905)a
Tell me, thou soul of her I love (1906)a
Rondel: In a Fairy Boat (1906)a
Fairies’ Song (1908)a
Daybreak (1910)a
A Child’s Prayer (1914)bd
If I had but two little wings (1914)bd
Little White Lily (1914)bd
Pastoral: The Shepherd (1914)a
Infant Joy (1914)a
The Lamb (1914)ac
Laughing Song (1914)ac
The Lost Doll (1914)bd
The Dream (1914)ac
The Echoing Green (1914)ac
The Moon (1914)bd
The River (1914)bd
The Mountain and the Squirrel (1914)bd
What does little birdie say? (1914)bd
He was a rat (1914)a
The Fairy Palace (1915)ac
The Phantom Wooer (1918)a
Tell me, where is fancy bred (1919)a
It was a lover and his lass (1919)a
Absence (1919)ac
Pack clouds away (1919)ac
Spring, the sweet Spring (1919)ac
Introit (1924)a
Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame (1924)a
Shall I then be spared? (1924)a
O Happiness, celestial fair (1924)a
Sweet Solitude (1924)a

Toccata Classics TOCC0680 [66’43’’]
English texts included
Producer Michael Ponder
Engineer Adaq Khan
Recorded a11 & 12 December 2021, c12 &13 March 2022 at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London; b26 November 2022 at St Silas, Kentish Town, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics rounds off coverage of Havergal Brian’s choral songs (aka part-songs) with a second volume that, as with its predecessor [TOCC0395], underlines the composer’s sheer versatility in a genre which occupied his thinking through almost two decades of his output.

What’s the music like?

It was with choral songs that Brian first attracted attention, settings of Henry Longfellow and James Thomson [tracks 1-3] testifying to his assurance in SATB or double-choir media when combining harmonic richness with a melodic eloquence and a rhythmic subtlety equalled by few of his contemporaries. His settings of fairy-themed verse by Bernard Weller and Gerald Cumberland [4/12], never coy in their whimsicality, show comparable ease writing for upper voices with a streamlined texture that prefigures his choral songs from the following decade.

Those months either side of the beginning of the First World War were to bring by far Brian’s largest number of choral songs – ostensibly as his means of accruing income while financially adrift in London, though the technical finesse of almost all those that survive are indicative of stylistic changes in his idiom also taking place. Much the most frequently encountered poet is William Blake [15-18, 22/23], with several settings from Songs of Innocence and Experience no less insightful or idiomatic than more familiar ones by later composers. By the same token, settings of Shakespeare and Thomas Nashe [10/11, 20] provide a distinctive take on often-set texts, whereas unison settings of Charles Kingsley, Ralph Emerson or Alfred, Lord Tennyson [21, 26/27] have a disarming if never ‘knowing’ naivety that transcends their respective texts.

Two enchanting Cumberland settings were most likely derived from an operetta for children duly abandoned, while those from such diverse authors as Matilda Betham-Edwards, Samuel Coleridge, George MacDonald, Robert Burns or Thomas Heywood [7-9, 13/14] between them tread a convincing path in terms of their suitability for amateur or professional singers. Most fascinating is a group composed during that interim between the first and second parts of the Gothic Symphony: settings of Hannah More [28-30] of a canonic and textural intricacy soon heard on a far more expansive scale, as was the fervency of totemic lines by Alexander Pope [6] and methodical treatment accorded the ‘Amen’ [5]. Settings of Thomas Lovell Beddoes [31] or Laura Richards [32], respectively lurid and sardonic, vividly round off this selection.

Does it all work?

It does, not least with the responsiveness to each song of the two choirs – Joyful Company of Singers resolutely unfazed by Brian’s demands in the ‘adult’ songs, as is Finchley Children’s Music Group in those by no means child-like songs for younger voices. Peter Broadbent and Grace Rossiter have marshalled their forces ably, while Gavin Roberts and John Evanson are not found wanting in piano parts which are often much more than accompaniments. Full texts are included, while John Pickard’s booklet note sets forth a wealth of pertinent observations.

Is it recommended?

It is, notwithstanding that the first volume is the more recommendable to those having yet to encounter this significant aspect of Brian’s output. Those who have done so should certainly acquire its follow-up album (which was recorded at the same sessions) without further delay.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the artist names for more on Grace Rossiter, Peter Broadbent, Finchley Children’s Music Group and Joyful Company of Singers. Meanwhile click on the name for the Havergal Brian Society

Published post no.3,030 – Sunday 27 September January 2026

Wigmore Hall – Monday lunchtime concerts returning next week

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posted by Ben Hogwood

Next week sees the start of Autumn programming for classical concert venues – among them London’s much-loved Wigmore Hall.

Once again they will be presenting a series of weekly Monday lunchtime concerts, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and featuring much-loved international artists and young, up-and-coming performers from the BBC New Generation Artists scheme.

Starting on Monday 14 September, the series can be viewed on the Wigmore Hall website but is spearheaded by an opening concert of Mahler and Tchaikovsky, from mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and pianist Sergey Rybin.

Further highlights include Barry Douglas playing Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, recitals by pianists Elisabeth Brauss and Richard Goode and performances from tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Jonathan Biss, wife-and-husband duo Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, the NOVO and Modigliani Quartets, the Orsino Ensemble, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston and pianist Sholto Kynoch, violinist Bomsori Kim and pianist Thomas Hoppe, the Leonore Piano Trio and Lawrence Power, clarinettist Olga Shebeta-Dragan and pianist Kristoffer Hyldig and finally a Christmas carol music from The Cardinall’s Musick. And that’s just for starters!

Published post no.3,010 – Monday 7 September 2026

On this day in 1686 – the birth of composer Benedetto Marcello

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by Ben Hogwood. By Vincenzo Roscioni, from Gallica Digital Library courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day in 1680, the composer Benedetto Marcello was born. While not the best known composer of the Marcello family – Alessandro is in wide circulation for his Oboe Concerto in particular – Benedetto is more than notable for some of the earliest published cello sonatas. You can enjoy these below, in a recording made for Brilliant Classics by cellist Renato Criscuolo and harpsicordist Aldo Criscuolo:

Published post no.2,927 – Wednesday 24 June 2026

On this day in 1946 – the premiere of the Paul Hindemith oratorio, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

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by Ben Hogwood. Image of the composer in 1945 by Foto von der Fondation Hindemith, Blonay, courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day, 80 years ago, the premiere of a substantial work by Paul Hindemith took place in the New York City Center. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: A Requiem for those we love (An American Requiem) is a setting of a large poem by Walt Whitman, and was commissioned by the conductor Robert Shaw and the Robert Shaw Chorale cin the wake of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.

Hindemith responded with a setting for alto, baritone, choir and orchestra, and Shaw conducted the premiere. Here is a more recent recording that he made for the Telarc label in 1987, which helped promote the cause of a seldom-heard work that is in fact amongst Hindemith’s finest works:

Published post no.2,887 – Thursday 14 May 2026

On Record – Robert Simpson: Chamber Music, Volume One (Toccata Classics)

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bEva-Maria Hartmann (soprano); cEmma Johnson, dPeter Cigleris (clarinets); dDerek Hannigan (bass clarinet); cRaphael Wallfisch (cello); dWill Duerden, dLevi Andreassen, dDaniil Margulis (double basses); cJohn Lenehan, bCornelis Witthoefft (pianos); aTippett Quartet (John Mills, Jeremy Isaac, violins; Lydia Lowndes-Northcott, viola; Božidar Vukotić, cello)

Robert Simpson
String Quartet in D major (1945)a
Songs – Trocknet nicht!b; The Cherry Tree (both c1942)b
Clarinet Trio (1967)c
Quintet for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and Three Double Basses (1981)d

Toccata Classics TOCC0701 [70’59’’]
English/German texts & English translation included
Producer / Engineer Michael Ponder

Recorded c3 June 2021 & d20 November 2023 at St George’s, Pinner View, London; a7 February 2023 at Studio TQHQ, Ruislip; b12 August 2024 at Lehmann Studios, Stuttgart

Released in January 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues the first of two releases intended to ‘plug the gaps’ in the survey of Robert Simpson’s chamber music recorded by Hyperion in the 1980s and 1990s, featuring mainly younger musicians who demonstrate keen understanding of this composer’s idiom.

What’s the music like?

Although hardly a cohesive collection as such, this album provides an alternative overview across the greater part of Simpson’s output. Nothing here could be considered inessential, while one of these pieces most likely ranks among his finest compositions from any period.

Composed (and duly accepted) as an examination exercise for Simpson’s Batchelor degree at Durham, the String Quartet in D thereafter remained unpublished and unheard until this recording. At just over 20 minutes, the modest dimensions belie its formal deftness and its expressive subtlety – a trenchant initial Allegro followed by an Adagio where Haydnesque wit makes way for Beethovenian profundity, an ingratiating Allegretto closer to intermezzo than scherzo then a final Presto of an exhilaration effortlessly sustained through to its close.

Simpson was always uneasy with the setting of texts (his two published choral works solve this issue in different though equally ingenious way), but these early settings of Goethe and Housman suggest a distinctive and, moreover, convincing approach which could well have become more so had he persevered. Interestingly, both have an almost confessional quality that the composer, still in his early twenties, might have felt better conveyed in instrumental terms. Something that can never be known for sure, but the attraction of these songs remains.

The late 1960s found Simpson writing two major chamber works with clarinet. The Clarinet Quintet has long been regarded among his finest works, but the slightly earlier Clarinet Trio has seldom been heard and is something of a revelation. From its spellbinding introduction, the initial Allegro makes a virtue of abrupt contrast between impulsiveness and remoteness, with the slow movement a fugitive if searching interlude making the final Allegro the more unequivocal as this builds to a powerful apotheosis offset by the otherness of its closing bars.

Simpson afficionados will be familiar with the Quintet for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and String Trio (Hyperion CDA66626), though maybe not the original incarnation with its three double basses. In fact the musical content sounds, for the most part, better suited to those arresting sonorities – not least the ethereal chorale-like texture of an opening Adagio which, after the mounting energy of a central Allegro, is infused with appreciably greater eloquence on its return and sees the whole work to an ending the more inevitable for its deep-seated repose.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. The present accounts lack little in overall conviction, nor does the sound lack anything in clarity or perspective, while the annotations by Matthew Taylor are as informative as might be expected from one for whom Simpson was a significant mentor.

Is it recommended?

Yes, with the follow-up (Sonata for Two Pianos and Brass Quintet) duly awaited. Incidentally, Taylor recorded the Flute Concerto (with Susan Milan) and Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach for the Simpson centenary in 2021 but which is yet to be released. Maybe this year?

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website

Published post no.2,768 – Thursday 15 January 2026