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Track(s) taken from SIGCD144

Unpredictable but providential

composer
Judith Bingham (b1952)
1992; revised in 2007
author of text
W H Auden (1907-1973)

Christopher Bowen (tenor), BBC Singers, David Hill (conductor)
Recording details: February 2008
St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, United Kingdom
Produced by Michael Emery
Engineered by Marvin Ware
Release date: November 2008
Total duration: 3 minutes 35 seconds
 

Reviews

'The BBC Singers do their erstwhile colleague proud, David Hill securing performances as flexible and multi-contoured as they are expressive and spatially-aware. The recorded sound is warm and natural jus like the music itself' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

'Judith Bingham is a former member of the BBC Singers, so it of no surprise to discover that she writes so effectively for chamber choir, each piece idiomatic yet challenging, and large with meaning. There’s the expressive, mystic, alpineinspired Gleams of a Remoter World. There’s the hope-filled Water Lilies, the sense of awe in Ghost Towns of the American West, a touching allegory of sin and forgiveness in the Shepheardes Calendar. Most powerful of all, however, is the by turns poignant and angry cycle Irish Tenebrae. Under David Hill’s direction, this superb choir gives precise, passionate and powerful readings' (The Times)

This piece is a take on those Elizabethan bird song pieces, with their ‘jug-jug, peewit’ refrains. The subtitle is ‘the arrival of a few summer migrants,’ and the text is a list of birds interspersed with a few words by Auden—‘Spring with its thrusting leaves and its jargling birds is here again’ (jargling is an archaic word often used to describe the sound of bells ringing). The music attempts, not too seriously, to imitate the songs of birds such as the spotted fly-catcher and the corncrake, in the latter case using a comb as a percussion instrument. The piece was commissioned by the Britten Singers for their inaugural concert in April 1991, and is dedicated to their conductor Stephen Wilkinson.

from notes by Judith Bingham © 2009

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