“‘Lux’ – the opening word of the opening track on ‘Sudden Light’, Lux orta est iusto – bursts into the ear, a glittering explosion of sound that scatters its bright shards in all directions with wonderful abandon. It’s a brilliant moment of music-drama, one of many on a disc that reinforces composer David Bednall’s real gift for word-setting.
Bednall has been quietly building up an impressive discography over the past few years, mostly thanks to the British label Regent, which most recently released his poignant Stabat mater (A/16). This new collection of choral works is interesting on two counts: as a chance to hear Bednall’s secular part- songs (less well represented on disc than his sacred works) and as the debut recording from the award-winning UK choir Epiphoni and their director Tim Reader.
Andrew Stewart’s elegant booklet notes stress Bednall’s Englishness, placing him in a long line of Romantic moderns like Edward Bawden and John Piper. But it’s the French influences that strike most forcefully in the composer’s sacred music, where a love of chant and some hazy, highly perfumed harmonies take us into the Catholic world of Duruflé, even Messiaen at times.
The exquisite miniature Tota pulchra es and the deft hymn-harmonisation of Te lucis ante terminum are representative of music that isn’t afraid of simplicity, its lovely melodies needing the apology of no harmonic modesty-cover. Best though is the giddy ecstasy of the Song of Solomon setting Rise up, my love, with its swelling, priapic organ accompaniment, and the Three Songs of Love – beautifully crafted settings of verses by Clare and Yeats that serve their texts faithfully.”
Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone, September 2017
“The Epiphoni Consort is a 32-strong SATB choir (9/9/6/8). The choir was founded in 2014 and this is their debut recording. The singers have all received advanced vocal and choral training but have not chosen to pursue professional careers. Let it be said loud and clear that on the evidence of this disc the Consort is a most accomplished ensemble. The sound they make is first-rate: the tone is fresh and firm; there’s excellent internal balance; and the diction is crystal clear. I really enjoyed listening to their performances.
Many choirs faced with making their debut disc would have chosen a mixed recital programme. Hats off, then, to Tim Reader for his enterprise in choosing a single-composer programme of pieces by one of the brightest talents in British choral music. The enterprise is enhanced because with the exception of Everyone Sang and the three excerpts from the Christmas cantata, Welcome All Wonders the programme otherwise consists of first recordings.
I’ve heard several discs of music by David Bednall in recent years and, in addition, individual pieces of his have cropped up in a number of mixed recital recordings. I’ve greatly admired what I’ve heard so I’m delighted to expand my knowledge of his output through these recorded premieres. Furthermore, to the best of my recollection, most if not all of his music that I’ve heard to date has been sacred in nature. Here The Epiphoni Consort include several examples of Bednall’s secular pieces.
Let’s start with those. Three Songs of Love actually sets four poems; two poems by W B Yeats constitute the middle song. The other poets set are John Clare and the Canadian, John McCrae (1872- 1918). In his excellent notes on the music Andrew Stewart suggests that these settings “deserve to be measured against the finest partsongs of Holst, Parry, Pearsall and Vaughan Williams.” I completely agree, though I’d add one important name to that list: Gerald Finzi. Indeed, the opening phrase of the John Clare setting, First Love, calls to mind the opening of Finzi’s My spirit sang all day. This set of songs is very fine indeed. The harmonic writing is rich and warm and Bednall’s music seems to me to be an excellent response to each of the poems he has selected. I also admire the Shakespeare setting Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? while Sudden Light, a setting of lines by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is another example of rich harmonisation; it’s a beautiful part song.
I’d normally classify Siegfried Sassoon’s poem Everyone Sang as a secular text but here it straddles the secular and sacred repertoires because Bednall set it as a wedding blessing. I’ve heard this piece before and I think it’s excellent. It begins confidently and joyfully but then, as the poem unfolds, Bednall matches Sassoon’s sentiments and the piece winds down to a pensive conclusion as the choir quietly repeats several times the line “The singing will never be done.” A Wedding Prayer is a very different nuptial piece. I infer from the notes that it is designed for a solo soprano with organ accompaniment but here unison sopranos sing it. The melody, discreetly accompanied, is simple and direct, touching the heart gently. It was a wedding gift to the composer’s sister and her husband: what a lovely present!
Tim Reader and his choir include three movements from David Bednall’s substantial Christmas cantata, Welcome All Wonders. This was written for Bednall’s alma mater, Queen’s College, Oxford and that college’s choir has recorded the complete work (review). If you don’t know the cantata then I hope these three excellently sung extracts will whet your appetite to seek it out. Tribus miraculis ornatum has dancing, jubilant music at the beginning and end encasing a warm contemplative central episode. But peaceful was the night is a lovely Milton setting, simple and expressive. Alleluia is actually the second movement (and the first vocal movement) in the cantata but here it forms a suitably joyous end to the programme. Like Randall Thompson before him, Bednall here proves that you can do an awful lot with a setting of just one word.
The opening piece in the programme is spectacular. Lux orta est iusto was composed in 2015 specifically to be performed alongside Tallis’s Spem in alium. Bednall’s piece is also in forty parts – he uses eight SATBarB choirs – and for this 15 extra singers have been drafted in. It’s a virtuoso a cappella composition which shows to the full David Bednall’s imaginative ear for choral textures. There’s a great deal of contrast too; sometimes we hear the full forces while at other times just one or two of the choirs are involved. The piece is something of a compositional tour de force and I should imagine it’s very challenging to coordinate. The present performance is marvellous and the recording brings out the spatial effects in the score most successfully.
Rise up, my love is also spectacular, not least on account of its organ part. There’s a short but hugely imposing organ introduction which sounds very French and much of the choral writing achieves a note of ecstasy that sounds like Howells on steroids. There’s a quiet, unaccompanied passage in the middle (‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart’) before the opening material is revisited even more splendidly. This is thrilling but the piece achieves a rapt, gentle close.
All the music on this disc is very fine and full of interest. David Bednall is a highly accomplished and eloquent choral composer and there are many choice examples of his art here. He’s exceptionally well served by The Epiphoni Consort who give assured and expert performances, their singing full of conviction. Clearly, Tim Reader has prepared them very thoroughly for this assignment.
The recorded sound is fully up to Paul Paul Baxter’s usual very high standards; the choir is heard clearly and in a pleasing acoustic ambience while the organ is superbly reported. Delphian invariably accompany their discs with excellent documentation and that’s the case here.
This is a most auspicious recording debut for The Epiphoni Consort; I look forward to hearing them again.”
John Quinn, MusicWeb International
“The composer David Bednall and the Epiphoni Consort choir are both rather new on the scene as of the 2010s, but here they’ve produced a top-notch recording of music that’s firmly rooted in the English choral tradition, yet absolutely distinctive. Annotator Andrew Stewart accurately points to aspects held in common by Bednall and the English “Romantic Moderns” of the 1930s, yet it might be better to call him a Romantic Eclectic. Some of the pieces here, taken in isolation, fit with those of other composers of the English, neo-tonal school, but it’s the sequence of events that’s more unusual. The music is sacred and secular, Latin and English, diatonic and polytonal, and thickly chromatic, yet all recognizably a product of the same pen. Sample the transition from the spacious Latin motet Lux orta est iusto (written for performance with Tallis’ Spem in alium, for similar forces) to the following setting of Rise up, my love, from the Song of Songs, which opens with a long organ prelude that reminds you of Vierne or Duruflé. The predominance of Shakespeare among the secular texts links the program closely to English tradition, but the settings are extremely varied, from madrigalistic to Poulenc-like, to works in the Vaughan Williams vein. The overall effect is lively and even a bit experimental, an impression reinforced by the choir-of-individuals approach of the Epiphoni Consort. Delphian contributes superb engineering work in the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Upper Norwood, Southeast London. This is new choral music that’s well worth checking out.”
James Manheim, allmusic.com
