COMPOSERS: Paul McCartney
LABELS: EMI
ALBUM TITLE: Paul McCartney's Ecce Cor Meum
WORKS: Ecce cor meum
PERFORMER: Kate Royal (soprano); Boys of King's College Choir, Cambridge; The Boys of Magdalen Choir, Oxford; Academy of St Martin in the Fields/Gavin Greenaway
CATALOGUE NO: 370 4242
Eight years in the making, Ecce
Cor Meum is Paul McCartney’s
fourth classical album, the result
of a commission from Magdalen
College, Oxford, whose choir is one
of three in this premiere recording.
In the opening ‘Spiritus’
McCartney cleverly splits the text
(English, with some Latin) spatially
and antiphonally between the
different sets of voices. Its architecture
is block-like, one section succeeding
another with little thematic
development, and its conclusion
slams in abruptly. There are plenty of effective ideas in the other four
movements, including fine, idiomatic
writing for soprano Kate Royal in the
‘Gratia’, a plangent oboe solo in the
Interlude: ‘Lament’, and bold use of
the organ in the concluding ‘Ecce Cor
Meum’. Overall, though, the results
are agreeably inoffensive but in no
way sharply distinctive.
Technically, McCartney has clearly
come a long way since the Liverpool
Oratorio. The classical learning curve,
however, seems somehow to have
squeezed much of the lyrical fecundity
and musical inventiveness out of one
of the greatest melodists in the history
of popular music history. Terry Blain