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Greater Love: The English Choral and Organ Tradition
Janette Fishell, organ
East Carolina University Chamber Singers
Daniel Bara, director
Quite possibly the best-sounding organ/choral disc we have ever recorded! The ECU Chamber Singers and organist Janette Fishell are conducted by Daniel Bara in these monuments of the English choral tradition. The choir’s sound is greatly enhanced by the sumptuous acoustics of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, and its large, new Fisk organ.
“At St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, NC, the East Carolina University Chamber Singers met to record this small yet mighty compilation of organ and choral music in the English tradition. The hallowed walls of the well-chosen venue truthfully captured both the tenor and the spirit of such 20th-century stalwarts as Howells, Tippett and Ireland. The Interlochen- and Eastman- trained baton of conductor Daniel Bara produces a choral sound that is lovely and clean. The texts are understandable and the vibratos are mostly in check—exactly how this music is supposed to sound. St. Paul’s new Fisk organ and the organist, Janette Fishell, are as good as they come.”
—The Living Church
“The disc title comes, of course, from the beloved John Ireland anthem, the penultimate selection on this program, and all of the repertory is English. Our colleague Janette begins the recording with a fiery performance of the Howells Psalm Prelude II/3 and accompanies effectively in the rest of the program.
Two major works are the Howells Requiem and Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb. Both are very well sung, though most of us likely have multiple recordings of these standards in our libraries already. The choir is to be commended for including all of the Five Negro Spirituals from Michael Tippett’s pacifist oratorio A Child of Our Time; the singers are especially effective in these pieces.The choir negotiates the interweaving textures of Robert Pearsall’s Tu es Petrus with aplomb, and the program concludes with a charming North Country folksong arranged by Philip Wilby. The choral sound is a bit darker than is generally heard in most of this repertory, but mellifluous and nicely blended; for the Tippett selections it is just perfect. All of the soloists are very professional, though the choice of a talented but rather operatic soprano for the Ireland anthem is jarring when the pure sound of an English treble is needed. As always, Roger W. Sherman has made a superb project of the recording, mastering and editing.”
—Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians
Daniel Bara, director of choral activities at East Carolina University at Greenville, North Carolina, acknowledges that the idea for this recording came from a shared affection for 20th-Century English choral music by him and his colleague, Janette Fishell, who is the organist for the program.
She opens with an animated and exuberant performance of the sixth and last of the Psalm-Preludes (Set 2:3) by Herbert Howells (1892-1983). This is followed by his Requiem for unaccompanied voices. It is not a liturgical Requiem-there is no such thing in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer-but a highly personal musical meditation by the composer on the untimely death of his son Michael from spinal meningitis in 1935. The composer suppressed the work until 1980, and since then there have been several recordings. The text is drawn from the offices for the Visitation of the Sick and the Burial of the Dead from the Prayer Book, Psalms 23 and 121 from the Prayer Book Psalter (Coverdale), and the Latin antiphon "Requiem aeternam dona eis..." in two settings placed after the psalms.
The eight-part motet 'Tu Es Petrus' by Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795-1856) is an 1854 reworking to sacred words of a madrigal written in 1840. Sir Michael Tippett (1905-98) included a series of unaccompanied arrangements of traditional spirituals in his oratorio A Child of Our Time on the model of JS Bach's use of Lutheran chorales in his oratorios. The spirituals are often sung by themselves as a suite. Rejoice in the Lamb by Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was commissioned in 1943 for St. Matthew's Church, Northampton, by the church's vicar Walter Hussey, one of the most enterprising patrons of religious art of his time. It has since become a classic. 'Greater Love Hath No Man' by John Ireland (1879-1962) dates from 1912 and is one of the staples of the English cathedral repertory. The program concludes with an arrangement for unaccompanied voices by Philip Wilby (b 1949), current professor of composition at the University of Leeds, of the northern English folk song 'Marianne'. It is a tender and quiet song of love and loss.
The East Carolina University Chamber Singers is the cream of the school's four choral ensembles-mainly undergraduate music majors. For this recording there are 39 singers (10-10-10-9). The choral tone is extraordinarily fine: warm, solid, well blended, and superbly disciplined. These qualities are enhanced by the friendly acoustic of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Greenville. I am inclined to think that the freshness and purity of sound we hear on this recording can only be obtained from well-trained young voices. Their diction is not affectedly British, but neither is it incongruously American. Daniel Bara directs performances that are thoughtful and sensitive, with remarkable care over phrasing and nuance.
There are many fine recordings of the Howells Requiem and Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, but I believe this one can stand with the best of them. The undergraduate soloists have secure and agreeable tone; but in some cases, most noticeably in Britten, they are not able to take the longer phrases in a single breath. This is a minor quibble and should not deter anyone. The organ is a recently completed Fisk (Opus 126) with all the warmth and gravity needed for the romantic heft of Ireland's 'Greater Love Hath No Man' and the palettte of colors for Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb.
— American Record Guide
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