The Feast of Saint Peter the Apostle at Westminster Abbey

Another fascinating collection from Westminster Abbey, recreating a particular liturgical event.

This disc contains music one might hear if visiting the Abbey on its patronal feast, that of St Peter the Apostle, which falls on 29 June. The programme broadly follows the structure of the three major choral services of the Anglican tradition, all of which can in turn be traced back to the worship familiar in the pre-Reformation period when the Abbey was a Benedictine monastery: Matins (or Morning Prayer); Eucharist (Mass); and Evensong (Evening Prayer). The two principal musical elements are William Byrd’s Mass for five voices, and, linking the morning and evening Offices, four movements from Charles Villiers Stanford’s Service in B flat. Also featured is Walton’s choral masterpiece The Twelve.

The Abbey choir sings with its usual full-throated joy, expertly directed by James O’Donnell.

CDA67770  70 minutes 8 seconds
‘A sumptuous banquet of choral delight awaits the hungry listener, laid out in three carefully balanced courses, to be savoured slowly, the whole programme sung and played with superlative skill  ...
‘The choir sounds best in Stanford's quintessentially Anglican Service in B flat and in Walton's The Twelve (1965) to a text by Auden. Its flamboyant organ part and fugal 'Twelve as the winds a ...
‘This superb CD … now that sung Matins is virtually extinct in all but the most august establishments, Stanford's Te Deum and Jubilate from his B flat Service have become comparative rarities, an ...