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Ian Venables: Requiem & Herbert Howells: Anthems for Choir & Orchestra
Eppie Sharp, Aine Smith, Edmund Saddington, LucyAnne Fletcher, Choir of Merton College Oxford, Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia, Benjamin Nicholas
This isn’t music to shake mountains, but its craftsmanship, sincerity and ability to stir the more tender emotions – well reflected in this performance – remains undeniably appealing.
Ian Venables: Requiem & Herbert Howells: Anthems for Choir & Orchestra
Eppie Sharp, Aine Smith, Edmund Saddington, LucyAnne Fletcher, Choir of Merton College Oxford, Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia, Benjamin Nicholas
Purchase product
This isn’t music to shake mountains, but its craftsmanship, sincerity and ability to stir the more tender emotions – well reflected in this performance – remains undeniably appealing.
About
Conductor Benjamin Nicholas draws parallels between the familiar English choral sound of Howells and that of contemporary composer Ian Venables. Venables’ Requiem has already been warmly received by critics in a 2020 recording with just organ accompaniment. Now, Nicholas and his Merton College choir present it in an orchestrated version made specially for this recording. The Howells items here are also premiere recordings: new instrumental accompaniments to two of his Four Anthems, in arrangements by Howells scholars Howard Eckdahl and Jonathan Clinch, illuminate and intensify his rich choral writing like back-lighting on a stained-glass window, and they are complemented by the first recording of Howells’ original orchestration of The House of the Mind – a chance to hear one of his major underperformed works, introspective yet dramatic.
Contents and tracklist
- Choir of Merton College Oxford, Benjamin Nicholas, Eppie Sharp
- Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia
- Choir of Merton College Oxford, Benjamin Nicholas
- Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia
- Choir of Merton College Oxford, Benjamin Nicholas, Aine Smith, Edmund Saddington, LucyAnne Fletcher
- Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia
- Choir of Merton College Oxford, Benjamin Nicholas
- Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia
- Benjamin Nicholas
- Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia
Spotlight on this release
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Ian Venables on the first recordings of his Requiem
18th Jan 2023
The composer talks to David about his Requiem, recorded on Somm Records in 2020 by the choir of Gloucester Cathedral, and more recently in its full orchestral version by the choir of Merton College Oxford and the Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia.
Awards and reviews
Christmas Issue 2022
This isn’t music to shake mountains, but its craftsmanship, sincerity and ability to stir the more tender emotions – well reflected in this performance – remains undeniably appealing.
November 2022
By turns moving and consoling, Venables' Requiem here recieves a superb rendition from Benjamin Nicholas and his Oxford forces, ever responsive to the composer's emotional tradjectory through the liturgical text ... A thoroughly admirable release
February 2023
This inspired recording project – a synthesis of musical intersections and connections, repertoire new and old, arrangements and homages – has been so carefully conceived and knitted together that it’s a winner before you even hear a note. Once you do, however, it only gets better.
1st December 2022
Venables makes his own selection from the standard requiem mass, omitting all of the Dies Irae apart from the final Pie Jesu, and ending his sequence with the Lux Aeterna, so that his requiem becomes a work of consolation more than anything else.
