COMPOSERS: Britten & Poulenc,Durufle,Holst,Part,Tavener,Tormis
LABELS: HMV
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: Song for Athene
WORKS: Works
PERFORMER: Winchester Cathedral Choir/David Hill, Vasari Singers/Jeremy Backhouse, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir/Tonu Kaljuste, Choir of King’s College, Cambridge/David Willcocks
CATALOGUE NO: 5 74050 2 (available only through HMV stores) Reissue (1994-8)
Tavener’s Song to Athene, made famous by the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, adds a royal touch to 20th-century religious choral music which, to quote the notes, ‘more and more people have come to enjoy as an escape from the pressures and stresses of modern life’. Better still if those people actually got together to sing it. As it is, however, Pärt’s Seven Magnificat Antiphons and Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia, plus works by Holst, Poulenc, Duruflé and the Estonian Veljo Tormis make for a pleasing collection, centred in the English cathedral sound of the Winchester Choir, directed by David Hill.
Nicholas Williams