The Girl Choristers of Canterbury Cathedral et al/Robert Rawson
Accent ACC24397 58:14 mins
Writing of the German musician Johann Ernst Galliard, who became a naturalised Englishman, the 18th-century music historian Dr. Charles Burney remarked that he had never seen more correctness – or less
originality – in any composer of the time he had examined, Dr. Pepusch always excepted. Burney’s dyspeptic outburst ill accords with this recording of Pepusch’s Chandos Anthems.
The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen has got form where Pepusch is concerned. Two previous releases on the Ramée label revealed music that places Burney’s assessment very wide of the mark. The present release features a Magnificat and two anthems which Pepusch wrote for James Brydges, Duke of Chandos.
They were performed variously at the Duke’s Edgware manor house, Cannons, at the parish church and, when it was completed in about 1720, the chapel. Handel had already written 11 anthems and much else for Cannons but, as he became increasingly involved in opera, Pepusch became its director of music. The two verse anthems and the Magnificat are written for solo voices, chorus and instruments.
The music is colourful, mainly in a theatrical style modelled on and recalling that of Venetian composers, but sometimes with a distinctive Handelian flavour. Choruses, arias and duets abound and the soloists, the Girl Choristers of Canterbury Cathedral and the instrumentalists breathe vitality into the music. In addition to the vocal works, there is a single movement oboe concerto, eloquently played by Mark Baigent. Robert Rawson, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for his rehabilitation of an unjustly overlooked composer, directs with both style and affection.