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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best of Kenneth Leighton, 7 Jan 2001
By A Customer
The St. Paul's Cathedral Choir offers here a broad sum of choral music by a composer who is shamefully neglected by modern audiences. Kenneth Leighton wrote a great many orchestral and chamber works in his lifetime, but it is in his church music that his essence is perhaps most fully projected. One need only listen to track 7 - his setting of "The Coventry Carol" - to appreciate his remarkable gifts as a composer.That work, one of his earliest choral pieces, is beautifully sung, but the programme as a whole is no less satisfying. The opening "Te Deum laudamus" amply and immediately demonstrates Leighton's distinctive textural and melodic writing: pungent chords, an array of dissonances and soaring, flowing melodies that engrain themselves on the mind at once. The other extended works on the disc are the "Missa Brevis" for unaccompanied choir, given a very stirring rendition here, and "Crucifixus pro nobis" for solo voice (tenor on this recording), choir and organ. This darkly meditative work shows the full development of Leighton's compositional technique, inspired by serialism but far closer to tonal than atonal music. The solo movement at the opening is quiet and brooding, the second movement unleashes the full force of the choir. The third movement features a dialogue by both vocal forces that grows in intensity as the events of the crucifixion are questioned in the text. Then, in the fourth movement, Leighton creates a gentle and moving setting of the well-known Passiontide hymn, "Drop, drop slow tears," bringing the cantata to a magical and wholly effective close. The programme is fleshed out further with Leighton's "Second Service," a setting of the Evening Canticles that is remarkably dream-like in effect, parts of it sounding reminiscent of the "Te Deum." Finally, there are two anthems: "Evening Hymn" (which lasts for eight minutes, evoking a satisfying mix of unaccompanied choral effects and beautifully conveying the text) and "Let all the world in every corner sing," with bold and joyful fanfare characteristics for choir and organ. Organist Andrew Lucas plays the final flourish on the Royal Trumpet pipes at the West End of the Cathedral, revealing the massive echo of the building to its limit. Indeed, this music benefits greatly from the eleven-second acoustic in St. Paul's - as it does from the incomparable singing of the St. Paul's Choir, skillfully conducted by John Scott and brilliantly accompanied. Neil MacKie's presence as tenor soloist in "Crucifixus" is the icing on the cake. In short, I cannot recommend this disc highly enough: lovers of church and choral music will revel in it, whilst those who have never discovered Kenneth Leighton will hopefully be struck by what they've been missing. Excellent!
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