Stephen Hough Mirabilis – Missa Mirabilis; December; Three Marian Hymns; Sonatina; Just as I am; Londinium Magnificat; Londinium Nunc dimittis; O soft self-wounding pelican; Danny Boy etc London Choral Sinfonia/Michael Waldron Orchid Classics ORC100256 75:17 mins
At a time when many composers count themselves fortunate to secure a work’s follow-up performance, pianist and polymath Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis notches up its second recording no less – this time preferring the 2007 original version for choir and organ to the orchestral respray he made for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. And whereas Andrew Litton’s recording with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra paired the Mass with Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis pacem, Michael Waldron opts for an all-Hough programme that includes the contemporaneous Londinium Service and the a cappella cycle December charting a course from Advent to New Year incorporating original settings of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and ‘Silent Night’.
If Hough’s liner notes sometimes suggest music cut from unapologetically cerebral cloth, on the ear, nothing could be further from the truth. He’s a musical magpie, embracing a relaxed eclecticism that in the Mass leans heavily towards France – especially Poulenc – but in passing finds room for Britten, Arvo Pärt and even a snatch of Orff. The diaphanous Kyrie is a world removed from the stark cries of ‘Credo’; and if the Benedictus puzzles, Hough’s elaboration supplies the solution: ‘God has become human, and the music is deliberately sentimental and intimate, as if two people are sharing a drink in a Parisian café, with a whiff of a 1950s pop tune coming from a neighbouring café’s jukebox’. Just so! Waldron directs his fresh-voiced choir with energising, always scrupulous ardour, while James Orford negotiates the intricacies of Hough’s accompaniments with aplomb and is rewarded with a solo: the disc’s most recent work, a compact two-movement organ Sonatina dating from 2019.
Paul Riley