A Rose Magnificat

Paul McCreesh, Gabrieli Consort

With any new recording from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort, you know to some extent what you’re going to get: glorious music, sung with intensity, passion and matchless technical aplomb, beautifully conceived and presented. The real pleasure, however, is always considerably enhanced by the ever imaginative and thoughtful programming, and by the often surprising juxtapositions thus created. And so it is with their latest release, ‘A Rose Magnificat’ which brings together British music from the Renaissance and the 20th and 21st centuries, centred on the theme of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The figure of Mary has been the source of a particularly rich seam of both music and poetry over the centuries, and all the works here set medieval texts which have lost none of their potency across the years. Marian devotion has always had a special place in the church music of the British Isles, paradoxically combining notions of the chaste and the fertile, the pure and the mysteriously erotic, virgin and mother, the unattainable intercessor…

These paradoxes play to the Gabrieli Consort’s strengths, combining visceral energy with radiant beauty of tone. The latter is evident at once in Kenneth Leighton’s Of a rose is all my song, where Ruth Provost’s crystal-clear soprano floats sensuously above the rest of the choir, the strong modal inflections redolent of Vaughan Williams in pastoral vein. Tallis’s Purification responsory Videte miraculum provides the first in the disc’s driving series of contrasts, the rich polyphonic sections vibrant and expertly blended. The shortest track, Peter Warlock’s As dew in Aprylle sparkles with a gentle good humour, qualities thrown further into relief by the majesty of Robert White’s Magnificat.

Then come three contrasting settings of the same text, the vespers hymn Ave maris stella. James MacMillan’s hauntingly rhythmic version, already a modern classic, and Owain Park’s equally beguiling setting, which at times seems to hang by the merest thread, frame the low-lying chant and rich Tudor euphony of John Sheppard, each work finely characterised by these accomplished singers.

In terms of sheer scale and polyphonic majesty, the earliest music on the disc, Robert Wylkynson’s mighty 9-part troped setting of Salve Regina (one of the glories of the Eton Choirbook), dwarfs the other works here. It says much for McCreesh’s programming skills that, notwithstanding this superbly polished and energised performance, the other items are by no means overshadowed. Howells’s Salve Regina, dating from his student years, combines a late Romantic soundworld with distinct signs of the English modalism that he was to make his own, plus a sure feel for overall shaping, while the calm simplicity of Jonathan Lane’s There is no rose provides a welcome moment of respite.

Last comes the title track, Matthew Martin’s A Rose Magnificat: Martin is himself an experienced choral conductor, and that experience shows in a deftly scored and paced setting of the traditional Latin Magnificat interwoven (perhaps ‘entwined’ is the more appropriate term here?) with the text of There is no rose. It’s a rhythmically vibrant and polyphonically accomplished work for double choir incorporating multiple layers, but with a clarity of formal design that builds to a climax of rewarding complexity. Clearly composed with a crack team of singers in mind, it makes an ideal finale, deploying an impressive array of textures and colours.

Recording and presentation are predictably excellent, and the booklet includes an illuminating, entertaining and occasionally donnish three-way discussion between McCreesh, Martin, and broadcaster/choral director Jeremy Summerly.