HAVPCD374 – Most Blessed and Glorious Lady
(To be released in March 2012)

A recording made with the Aid to the Church In Need to help Christians who suffer persecution or oppression for their faith.

The liturgical character of life at Lviv’s Seminary of the Holy Spirit encourages the formation of cantor groups in each seminary class, and each of these in turn leads the liturgical singing in the seminary’s chapel. These groups are composed of seminarians who have a good knowledge of the Church Typikon as well as of liturgical music. These groups are the bearers of the musical traditions of our seminary. However, there has always been a need for a small seminary choir that would be able to perform Church music professionally and set the tone for the life of the seminary community. This group could also represent the seminary in artistic, cultural and religious circles. As a result, every few years, a group of fellow seminarians gathered for this very purpose, but they never formed a permanent choir.

There had long been the idea of creating a stable group; however, it was only in 2006 that it was brought to life. At this time the octet began its work in a new format and in October 2008 it took the name “Theophoros” (from the Greek “God bearer”). Its major task is to work on the best examples of liturgical music, which then come to life in the seminary’s liturgical services. The octet’s particular heritage is a combination of some famous and some unknown compositions of sacred music, which differ in character and genres. Most of these pieces have been included on this album.

HAVPCD373 – Festival of Faith
(To be released in March 2012)

A recording made with the Aid to the Church In Need to help Christians who suffer persecution or oppression for their faith.

In 2008, the Seminary of the Holy Spirit in Lviv, Ukraine, celebrated the 225th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this occasion, several events took place over the course of the year that were designed to honour all those who, throughout the years of the seminary’s existence, zealously worked on the formation of priestly vocations. One of these events was the Festival of the Choirs of Greek Catholic Seminaries that took place on 6th December 2008 at the seminary in Lviv. The festival’s aim was to invite other seminaries to the celebration in order to experience the happiness of the jubilee together.

The festival of seminary choirs was a place for the seminary communities to meet and communicate, providing an opportunity to get to know one another better and share their accomplishments in the realm of choral music.

HAVPCD370 – Follow the Star

This latest CD release by the choir of Wakefield Cathedral seeks to bring to public attention some of the lesser known and unusual compositions and arrangements of the Christmas repertoire, whilst including favourite melodies every listener will enjoy. The tracks take the form of a journey through Advent to the birth of Christ, ending with the visit of the Magi at the Epiphany.

Many of the tracks are composed or arranged by contemporary composers, including ‘O leave your sheep’ by Wakefield old chorister, Kenneth Leighton. Perhaps of particular interest is the treble voices arrangement of “People look East” by Paul Trepte, and the Spanish Carol ‘Riu riu chiu’ by Mateo Flecha. Mack Wilberg’s playful arrangement of ‘Ding dong merrily on high’ has gained in popularity since it was performed during Carols from Kings in 2009, but has rarely been recorded.

The CD displays well the independent top lines of boy and girl choristers, gloriously bringing them together for some tracks, and there is also the opportunity to hear two contrasting organ works,“Epiphanie” by Gaston Litaize being particularly little known. Throughout the disc however, the organists manage to extract many of the outstanding and varied colours from the Cathedral’s Compton organ.

This recording marks the first collaboration on CD of the new music department in Wakefield Cathedral, Simon Earl and Thomas Moore having been appointed to their respective positions in January 2011.

HAVPCD366 – English Fayre

This recording takes the listener on a tour of late nineteenth and twentieth century English organ music, as befits the instrument found in Winchester Cathedral. The programme opens with the first of the two cornerstones of the organ repertoire featured on this recording, Willan’s Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue in E flat minor.

Healey Willan (1880-1968) was born in England, and after beginning his career in London, emigrated to Toronto in 1913. The Introduction Passacaglia & Fugue was written three years later, and was dedicated to Sir Walter Alcock the then organist of Salisbury Cathedral. Clearly written with the Salisbury Father Willis organ in mind, the mysterious nature of the opening four bars is rudely interrupted by the dramatic fantasia, that forms the Introduction.

HAVPCD364 – The Organ of Chichester Cathedral

This eclectic musical experience is evident in his organ music, which also demonstrates a technical ability acquired from his composition lessons with Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Allegretto and Scherzo share a whimsical humour; the Andante tranquillo has a wistful, Elgarian quality and Folk Tune a haunting melody which is heard three times with different registrations. Paean is a Greek title for a choral hymn of praise to Apollo, but has come to denote an exulting musical piece. It is a ‘Tuba tune’ and was written for his then fiancée Edna May Kingdon.

HAVPCD363 – Bryd to Blow

The opening pieces, by William Byrd, are performed on what would have been the full extent of the available stops of a large organ of the period. The opening Fancy is performed on a solo Open Diapason, the main foundation stop on the large organ. The opening section has a choral quality, with voices introduced one at a time. The second section opens with fanfare-like chords, and gradually lines break away and become more flamboyant, building to a grand final cadence. For Salvator Mundi the hymn melody is heard in long notes between two embellished lines, and for the final grand Fantasia the full scale of the large organ is employed.

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.

HAVPCD354 – The Bliss of Solitude

This beautiful album, recorded in the delightful surroundings of Brentwood Cathedral, features the magnificent tenor voice of Richard Dowling in partnership with the pianist Joanna Smith, who also contributes several enchanting pieces for solo piano. The recordings include Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge in the version for piano and voice, as well as the first recording of Andrew Wright’s exquisite The Bliss of Solitude – settings of verses by William Wordsworth – and music by Roger Quilter.

‘The Bliss of Solitude’, Andrew Wright. For someone who devotes the majority of their compositional endeavours to the liturgy of the Church, the shift to writing for the voice (in the form of the Song Cycle) is easy to comprehend. In the liturgy, the spoken word is, shall we say, lifted when sung; a simple chant can make the everyday of one’s vernacular language become the sacredness of the numinous – we are transported to somewhere outside of ourselves. And isn’t this what music is about? When Andrew Wright completed his Requiem in 2005 it was the culmination of some twenty years or more of composing; being his largest-scaled work thus far, as well as his most ambitious compositional project.

Richard Dowling (tenor) and Joanna Smith (piano)

After many years experience as an active musician, his tastes and interests are broadening: with his knowledge of the voice (he was a member of The Tallis Scholars) and his inherent love of nature (particularly the Lake District) he was increasingly becoming inspired towards a new area for compositional exploration. Then came the gift of a copy of the poetical works of William Wordsworth. This spurred Wright on to set the texts to music. The initial suggestion for these songs came from singer and oboist friend, Julia Bentham. Bentham and Wright had worked on the staff at the choristers’ school at Westminster Cathedral and so their musical acquaintance had been a long one when Bentham suggested Wright might set one or two of Wordsworth’s texts to music. After favourable reception of the earlier songs, the project was worked into a song cycle proper by Wright, with performances given in London and Grassmere.

HAVPCD351 – COEPERUNT LOQUI Cheltenham College Chamber Choir

One of the finest and most prolific composers of the period, Orlando di Lassus, was born at Mons, Hainaut in 1532. Following a series of prestigious posts in Italy and Antwerp, in 1556 he entered the service of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich.

The initial appointment was as a tenor in the chapel choir but he was soon promoted to maestro di capella, a post he retained for over thirty years until his death, being succeeded in turn by his two sons. Here he produced an enormous quantity of church music, including many motets, four passions and some sixty mass settings. Many of these are ‘parody’ masses, based on secular material such as chansons or madrigals or on motets written by himself or others, frequently including florid and intricate counterpoint handled with great skill. In contrast, the masses founded on plainsong are more typically concise, syllabic and straightforward and although not characteristic of the composer at his most sublime, they possess a coolly austere beauty….

By any other yardsticks these are very impressive performances, evoking the spirit and idiom of the music superbly, and much helped by Herald’s atmospheric recording from the lovely chapel at Cheltenham College. Ffinch shapes the music and controls the singers with unerring sensitivity, producing some matchless cadences (I particularly admire the closing of Tallis’s O sacrum convivium), while the singers themselves are capable of producing a sound of great depth and substance (as with the magnificent full-toned choral passages in Sheppard’s Reges Tharsis et insulae).
- Marc Rochester. International Record Review, March 2010.

Alexander Ffinch, the College Organist, founded the Cheltenham College Chamber Choir in 2007. Established with the clear purpose of performing demanding unaccompanied music, the Chamber Choir has rapidly gained a reputation as an excellent choir, with a distinctive repertoire. Having performed at Winchester Cathedral, and various Oxbridge Colleges, this CD, the Choir’s first release, comes on the back of a very successful tour to New York. Since its foundation, the choir has rehearsed and sung a variety of choral pieces, ranging from the 16th Century up to the modern works of John Tavener and Arvo Pärt. Whilst enjoying the range of pieces, the choir has felt an especial affinity with the music of the Renaissance. This is dynamic and powerful, reflecting the enormous creative energy across Europe that was present at the time.

Alexander Ffinch studied at the Royal College of Music and was later organ scholar of Keble College, Oxford where he subsequently became a pupil of Thomas Trotter. He was resident organist at Lancaster Town Hall where he gave over 100 recitals in the 1990’s also winning recognition in the St Albans Interpretation Competition in 1999. He performed regularly in the UK, Europe and the USA and is a wellknown international recitalist. Notable recent appearances have been in USA at Christ Church Greenville and St Mark’s Berkeley, CA and also in the Far East where he gave a recital to celebrate the Messiaen Centenary at The Academy for Performing Arts in Hong Kong. In 2009 he was organist on the newly released disc, ‘Salve Puerule’ (HAVPCD349) a collection of Christmas choral music. Recent recital engagements have included: The Cathedral of St John The Divine, New York; Westminster Abbey; and in 2010, Hong Kong Cultural Centre. He was appointed College Organist of Cheltenham College in 2004, after a three-year tenure as Director of Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and established the College Chamber Choir in 2007.

This is a very creditable achievement indeed, and one which can hold its own against all but the most powerful competition.
- Marc Rochester. International Record Review, March 2010.