CD Review, New College Choir

4:52pm Wednesday 20th August 2008

'Few composers of his stature have been so comprehensively and so unjustly ignored for nearly five centuries," says the sleeve note to New College Choir's new CD of sacred music by Nicholas Ludford (K617206). Meanwhile The Oxford Companion to Music opines: "Ludford (c.1485-1557) wrote mainly in an idiom that emphasised grandeur and exuberance of florid detail rather than humanistic expression." If that comment is supposed to suggest that Ludford was a little shallow, try New College's rendering of the Credo in his Missa Benedicta. There is no lack of humanity there. However, New College director of music Edward Higginbottom (pictured) plainly agrees that Ludford favoured exuberance too, with the treble line frequently soaring over solid foundations provided by the lower voices.

Above all, this CD proves that Ludford has indeed been shamefully neglected. The singing and recorded sound are exemplary - recording took place last year in the lively acoustic of the Church of St Martin de Hoff in Sarrebourg, France, but there is no lack of clarity in the words. I suspect that this very worthwhile disc will become a benchmark in its field.

Back home, and more up-to-date for another New College Choir release, The Victorian and Edwardian Anthem (CRD 3513). This CD begins with Elgar's Give unto the Lord - in a performance of considerable umpf and dramatic drive - and ends in similarly powerful fashion with Parry's famed I was Glad. In between, there's more Parry (his Lord, let me know mine End has the choir working fearlessly through long, intertwining musical lines), plus John Stainer, Charles Wood, Alan Gray, and Frederick Bridge. Particularly intriguing to me were Stainer's marching rhythms in I saw the Lord, and Bridge's confident Happy is the Man. Indeed, confidence is the primary feeling that comes through in all these anthems, written as most of them were for Anglican cathedrals and Oxbridge chapels as yet unused to the uncertainties of the 21st century.

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