The sublime Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge return with the third volume in their Advent series celebrating the advent season from within the Christian tradition; a season celebrated since, at least, the sixth century.

Sound/Video

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Frances-Hoad: Lo! The desert-depths are stirr’d
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Ledger: Advent Calendar
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Grime: Telling
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Pott: There is no rose
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Bach: Herr Christ, der ein’ge Gottes-Sohn, BWV 601
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Williams, JR: Pan fo’r stormydd garwa’n curo
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Trad.: O come, O come, Emmanuel! (arr. T Helmore; descant: D Hill)
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Anon.: Nowel, nowel. Owt of your slepe
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Weir: Drop down, ye heavens, from above
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Bach: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659
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Preston: There is no rose
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Stainer: Come, thou long-expected Jesus (tune: Cross of Jesus; descant: C Robinson)
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L’Estrange: O virgo virginum
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Maxwell Davies: One star, at last
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Trad.: O Dayspring; O King of the nations (antiphons)
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Bach: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645
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Warlock: Adam lay ybounden
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Bach: Gottes Sohn ist kommen, BWV 600
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On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry (tune: Winchester New; descant: C Robinson)
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Trad.: O Emmanuel (antiphon)
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Ledger: Adam lay ybounden
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Gardner: A Gallery Carol

Europadisc Review

Since 2016 the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, under its recently departed Director of Music Andrew Nethsingha, has treated listeners to a splendid series of recordings on its own imprint, part of the Signum Classics group. Two series of discs – ‘Magnificat’ and ‘Advent Live’ – have been particularly impressive, and when it came to choosing our annual Christmas recommendation for 2023, Volume 3 of ‘Advent Live’ quickly became an obvious choice. It documents services across three years, from 2020 to 2022: 2020 was performed and broadcast ‘live’ but without a congregation present, coming amid a Covid lockdown. In 2021 several choristers had to isolate and Nethsingha himself was incapacitated by Covid: the service was sung by a reduced choir under the direction of the Senior Organ Scholar, George Herbert. 2022 turned out to be Nethsingha’s last at St John’s before he took up another prestigious post, as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey (where he was instantly thrust into the limelight with King Charles’s Coronation). It was also the first year in which the choir included girl choristers.

Given the testing circumstances under which some of these recordings took place, it’s a marvel that there’s such consistency across the disc as a whole, which broadly traces a journey from John the Baptist’s cries amid the desert landscape to jubilant shepherds proclaiming the birth of Christ. Three elements provide punctuating ‘pillars’ to the programme: Advent hymns including the traditional ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’ and culminating in the thrilling ‘On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry’; three Advent antiphons sung to traditional plainchant; and four chorale preludes by J.S. Bach (including the ever-popular ‘Wachet auf’), all stylishly played in 2022 by George Herbert.

The meat of the disc, however, is provided by the wide selection of original settings of Advent texts old and new, almost all by 20th- and 21st-century composers, a reminder of Nethsingha’s consistent championing of new and recent music across the 15 years of his St John’s tenure. Here, the most striking contributions are from women composers, starting with Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Lo! The desert depths are stirr’d, whose twanged harp bass notes launch the album so grippingly. Setting an 18th-century text by Charles Coffin, it combines desert-like arid textures with an engagingly dance-like gait.

Helen Grime’s Telling is her first work for unaccompanied choir, but you’d never guess it from the confident way in which the voices are deployed across a range of carefully gradated dynamics, with harmonic dissonances spicing up its bright textures. Judith Weir’s Drop down ye heavens, from above (originally written for the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1984) starts and closes with sparse textures and quiet dynamics, but builds to a radiant, treble-topped climax.

If the main honours here fall to the distaff side, the other items are still impressive and varied, and many have links to Cambridge and St John’s. Advent Calendar, composed in 2002 by Philip Ledger (1937–2012) as a tribute to one of Nethsingha’s predecessors at St John’s, George Guest, sets a text by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It reaches a vibrant climax in the arresting contrasts of its final stanza. Francis Pott’s There is no rose has a warmer harmonic language, while the late Simon Preston’s 1971 setting of the same 15th-century text alternates passages of seductively sumptuous harmony with snappier, jazzy sections.

There are also two settings of another 15th-century carol text, Adam lay ybounden, the first (with accompaniment) by Peter Warlock, the second (sung a cappella) by Philip Ledger. Perhaps the boldest juxtaposition is of Henry L’Estrange’s warmly radiant O virgo virginum (composed at the tender age of just 12!) with the contained astringency of Peter Maxwell Davies’s 1984 setting of George Mackay Brown’s One star, at last. An anonymous 15th-century carol, Nowel, nowel. Owt of your slepe provides a welcome spotlight on solo voices from the choral scholars, highlighting their characterful individuality rather than the more blended sound into which they are more usually subsumed. The disc reaches its ebullient conclusion with A Gallery Carol by John Gardner (1917–2011), best known for Tomorrow will be my dancing day, and contains similarly snappy syncopations, punctuated by massive organ chords.

Luxuriantly recorded, and with detailed notes by Martin Ennis, the disc as a whole presents a most satisfying experience from three remarkable years in the life of the St John’s Choir, and is a tribute to Nethsingha’s stewardship. Happily well-documented on disc, his will be a hard act to follow, but we hope that his successor Christopher Gray will lead them in many further recordings. In the meantime, this album is the ideal companion in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2023.