Herald AV Publications

HAVPCD362 – Personent Hodie
(Due for Release in November 2010)

Forward by – The Abbot of Ealing
There are few professional Catholic Church Choirs in London; even fewer have boy choristers, but only one serves a monastic community: in this case, the monastery of St Benedict at Ealing in West London. For a century the Abbey Choir has been deepening and enhancing the worship and prayer of those who come to St Benedict’s. I am very proud of our musical tradition here at Ealing, and I warmly support and encourage the valuable work that has been done by the Abbey Choir in this recording to support Aid to the Church in Need. The Christmas message, which is so beautifully sung in this CD, reminds us of the call to peace and reconciliation in our world. This is the mission of the Church and the special work of Aid to the Church in Need in its support for persecuted and oppressed Christians around the world. All involved in this valuable work have my appreciation, encouragement and prayers.
Rt. Revd. Martin Shipperlee, OSB

Christopher Eastwood began his musical studies as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral, under the direction of James O’Donnell. In addition to the Cathedral’s daily services, Christopher also sang for concerts and television and radio broadcasts as well as numerous recordings.

Christopher read music at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he was the Senior Organ Scholar with responsibility for the choir and the music in the college chapel. In 2001 Christopher toured with the college choir to the North of England and then to Venice in 2003. During this period he also directed the choir in a recording of music by the Wesley family, which was released in 2003 to favourable reviews. During his time at Oxford, Christopher maintained an active interest in singing, especially with the early music group, Magdala, directed by David Skinner, and on recordings of the music of Orlando Gibbons, and the soundtrack for the BBC’s Blue Planet series with Magdalen College Choir.

HAVPCD361 – L’Orgue Mystique – Charles Tournemire (1870-1939)

When Tournemire began work on l’Orgue Mystique in 1927 he was 57 years old. As organist of the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde for almost thirty years, and successor of the legendary César Franck, he was universally recognised as a towering presence in the Parisian organ world, and the greatest living master of the art of improvisation. But as an organ composer, at this date he was no more than a minor figure. Tournemire’s contemporary and fellow Franck-pupil, Louis Vierne, had already written nearly all his organ music (the two sets of 24 pieces, and five of the six Symphonies); the early works of Marcel Dupré were attracting widespread attention, and even younger composers like Duruflé were starting to appear.

Tournemire had written almost nothing – a few early harmonium and organ pieces (which he dismissed as “sins of my youth”), and just one big work, the Triple Choral of 1910. He had been far from idle during the past thirty years, but his ambitions as a composer extended far beyond the organ-loft, and he had devoted most of his time to the composition of major works for orchestra, many of them with voices, including eight symphonies and three operas. The ‘musical legend’ Le Sang de la Sirène won the prestigious Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1904, and the ‘lyric drama’ Les Dieux sont morts (1912) was staged at the Paris Opera in 1924. But none of these works achieved more than a handful of performances at best, and most of the music that Tournemire wrote after the First World War was neither published nor performed.

In the liberated, pleasure-seeking Paris of the 1920s, Tournemire had become an increasingly isolated figure. A visionary idealist inspired by a profound catholic faith, he believed that the only true purpose of music was the expression of spiritual truth: music that was not written for the glory of God was inutile – a waste of time.

HAVPCD359 – The Gentle Art of Percy Whitlock

Percy William Whitlock was one of the outstanding English organist-composers of his time. Born in Chatham on 1st June 1903, he spent his first twenty-seven years in the Medway towns, in particular at Rochester, where he was associated with the Cathedral from 1911-1930, initially as a probationer chorister (under Bertram Luard-Selby) and later as assistant organist to Charles Hylton Stewart. He also held church organist and choirmaster posts at St Mary’s, Chatham and St Matthew’s, Borstal. In 1920 he took up a Kent County Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London where he studied composition with Charles Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and organ with Henry Ley.

His fame as a performer and composer spread quickly when in 1930 he moved to Bournemouth, first as Director of Music at St Stephen’s Church (1930-35) and then, from 1932, as Municipal Organist for the Borough. He was also an active broadcaster and musical journalist. He died on 1st May 1946 aged forty-two. Whitlock’s oeuvre was large and varied, including orchestral works (notably the Symphony in G minor for organ and orchestra of 1937) composed mostly for the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra – choral and church music, hymn-tunes, solo songs and several chamber works, including a magnificent Piano Quintet (also in G minor!). His reputation, however, remains firmly based on his beautifully-crafted organ music.

Roderick Elms studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He appears in concerts, recordings and broadcasts with most of Britain’s major orchestras, both as a principal keyboard player and as a soloist. He has broadcast regularly for the BBC for more than thirty years on Radio 3 as well as Radio 2’s Friday Night is Music Night and has made many solo recordings with the Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, London Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestras. He also works as a chamber player and for several years he was London pianist to the eminent cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Foreign tours have taken him around most of Europe as well as to the United States, Canada, South Africa, Israel, Russia and the Far East.

He has an extensive discography for EMI and Chandos which includes solo contributions as well as all the major oratorios of Elgar and also the award-winning recording of Britten’s War Requiem with the LSO and Richard Hickox. His solo piano recordings include, with the RPO, Hubert Bath’s Cornish Rhapsody, the Spellbound and Warsaw Concertos, and da Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain. Other recordings include music of Frank Martin with the LPO and of Charles Williams and Mischa Spoliansky with the BBCCO.