Advent Live

Andrew Nethsingha, The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, Glen Dempsey (organ), Joseph Wicks (organ), Stephanie Childress (violin)

For many years now the Christmas season has expanded forward to take up the weeks and months before 24 December in ‘the lead-up to Christmas’. Time was when the season of Advent (commencing in western traditions on the fourth Sunday before Christmas) was taken more thoughtfully as a time of anticipation, reflection and even fasting (before, that is, Advent calendars containing everything from chocolates and gin to beauty products overwhelmed the shelves). So it’s always a special event to welcome a well-conceived disc of Advent music amid the yearly blizzard of Christmas-themed albums. The latest release from St John’s College, Cambridge, on the Signum label is just such a disc, and it makes for immensely rewarding listening.

Taken from BBC broadcasts of the annual St John’s Advent service with carols from four consecutive years (2014-2017), it’s a wide-ranging musical reflection on traditional Advent themes: the coming of Christ, the central figure of Mary, but also the often overlooked ‘forerunner’ St John the Baptist as well as the Second Coming (or Day of Judgement). The emotions involved are far more ambitious than you’ll find on most Christmas albums, and the music included here, all selected by Andrew Nethsingha, the Choir’s current music director, is similarly adventurous, with particular focus on new commissions and pieces with links to Cambridge and St John’s itself. Yet there’s also plenty for traditionalists to enjoy, and all the performances are distinguished by that unique St John’s blend of clarity and tonal richness that have made it a serious rival of its near neighbours at King’s College for the seasonal crown.

The earliest music here comes from the Renaissance, with Palestrina’s motet ‘Fuit homo missus a Deo’ and Orlando Gibbons’s ‘This is the record of John’, the latter featuring a particularly accomplished solo contribution from countertenor Hugh Cutting. At the more traditional end of the spectrum, Vaughan Williams’s ‘The Truth sent from above’, Stephen Cleobury’s arrangement of The Cherry Tree Carol, Edgar Pettman’s celebrated adaptation of the Basque Carol The Angel Gabriel and David Willcocks’s arrangement of ‘Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’ all receive fine, brilliantly nuanced performances. The latter text is also heard in an engaging new setting by James Burton that moves with an easy grace.

Ian Shaw contributes a pair of excellent new settings of ‘Adam lay ybounden’ and ‘I know of a maiden’, the latter featuring an enchanting harp obbligato mesmerisingly realised by Anne Denholm. Further instrumental contributions come from outstanding College violinists Stephanie Childress and Julia Hwang in Tim Watts’s The Birth of Speech, and another challenging new work is James Long’s ear-catching Vigilate, while Paul Comeau’s Lux mundi offers a more sustained pensive mood.

Veteran composers John Joubert and Francis Jackson are represented in ‘There is no rose’ and ‘I know a flower’, while Malcolm Archer’s Linden Tree Carol and Judith Bingham’s The Clouded Heaven are further distinguished additions to the disc’s coverage. With Britten’s A Hymn of Saint Columba and David Bednall ‘Noe, noe’ framing proceedings, Nethsingha has devised an absorbingly satisfying programme that encompasses both old and new, the traditional and the challenging.

The overall flavour of reflection and anticipation is further enhanced by the fact that all these superb performances were captured live on Advent Sunday in their respective years, and you can feel the atmosphere not just from the faint noise of the organ blower but also from the palpable concentration that comes from accounts captured ‘on the wing’. College organists Glen Dempsey and Joseph Wicks offer vibrant support in the accompanied items, and this is surely a disc to savour for years to come. For a season once associated with fasting, it offers a veritable feast that will have you pondering anew on the Advent themes.