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Track(s) taken from CDH55228

Sing unto the Lord

composer
author of text
Psalm 30: 4-11

Winchester Cathedral Choir, David Hill (conductor), Robin Blaze (countertenor), Stephen Varcoe (baritone), Stephen Farr (organ), Donald Sweeney (bass), Nicholas Pepin (countertenor)
Recording details: April 1999
Winchester Cathedral, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: April 2000
Total duration: 5 minutes 55 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Magdalena Consort, Fretwork, Peter Harvey (bass), William Gaunt (bass), Charles Daniels (tenor), Jeremy Budd (tenor)

Reviews

‘Hill breathes new life into Gibbons' musical and spoken rhetoric, using tempo and dynamics to set up conflicts between vocal lines. Perfectly complemented by Robin Blaze … the choral sound is exemplary―clean, but edged with an appealing English softness … a glorious sound’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘This recording is a well-balanced introduction to Gibbons' obvious musical talent’ (Scotland on Sunday)
‘Sing unto the Lord’ also lacks a local habitation, in that its Chapel use is undocumented; yet the score calls it ‘made for Do(cto)r: Marshall’, possibly Hamlett Marshal, another king’s chaplain from 1616. A bass solo responds here to a fellow bass, not a tenor; but Gibbons deftly avoids the ‘table-leg’ bass harmonic progressions that hobble some writers. The sinewy sheen of his counterpoint for strings or keyboard perhaps explains something unique to his vocal manner. Voices surrender a little independence; but the resultant linear style’s achievement is better seen as pure fusion of instrumental and vocal. Time and again this comes through in the run of the anthems, where close canon between soloists intensifies the oratory to imbue the whole with inward raptness.

from notes by David Pinto © 2017

Other albums featuring this work

Gibbons: In chains of gold - The English pre-Restoration verse anthem, Vol. 1
Studio Master: SIGCD511Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
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