“Welcome All Wonders is a Christmas cantata specially commissioned from the organist and composer David Bednall by the choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford. The actual music isn’t, in fact, overtly Christmassy, but that’s not to say that it isn’t an excellent disc: the singing is incredibly tight, in the manner to which it has become increasingly accustomed under its musical director, Owen Rees, and Bednall’s writing is ingenious, embedded in a profound understanding of the workings of choir and organ – both as distinct entities and as a partnership. Although the music is often harmonically complicated, it still maintains a tonality and superficial simplicity that makes it extremely appealing for a multi-movement contemporary piece.”
Caroline Gill, Gramophone, December 2013
“A Christmas Cantata in 15 movements, with organ and trumpet, Bednall’s work makes a bright, immediate impression, the idiom accessible without being superficial.”
BBC Music Magazine, December 2013
“Modern masterpiece – The trend in Christmas music recordings this winter is away from traditional carols and towards newly written cantatas. First and best of these is 34-year-old organist David Bednall’s Welcome All Wonders, a thrilling sequence of 15 settings of diverse poems and liturgical texts for choir, organ and trumpet. It is performed on this Signum CD (SIGCD335) by the full, rich, men’s and women’s voices of Bednall’s alma mater, Queen’s College, Oxford. “The Slaughter of the Innocents” is the long heart of the work, at first sinister, then ghostly, consisting of poems by Longfellow, Prudentius and Christina Rossetti who will be relieved no longer only to be associated with “In the Bleak Midwinter” or “In the BMW”, in witty chorister-speak. The fact that is has a nickname is evidence of the over-familiarity of a small number of carols and hence the trend. Bednall also sets Milton, whose wise men are “wizards”, Crashaw (“Welcome all Wonders in one sight!/Eternity shut in a span!”), Pope, and others. This is a lesson learned from Britten, who selected often and carefully from wide reading. Music was once thought to have no purpose apart from dancing if it wasn’t backing a song, and composers should remember their Homeric origins as the servants of poetry. The vividness of Bednall’s writing reflects the texts, by which he is clearly moved. He has the courage, as Britten had, to be simple when necessary. The spectral women’s voices in “The Slaughter” do nothing more than sing a beautiful melody over eternal long notes in the bass. The piece is a modern masterpiece.”
The Tablet, 21 – 28 December 2013
“Welcome all Wonders: A Christmas Cantata, by David Bednall, is a large-scale work for choir, organ and trumpet spanning 15 movements. It celebrates the Christmas story through an inspiring selection of poetry and liturgical texts, Performed by The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, under the baton of Owen Rees, this CD comes highly recommended.”
The Northern Echo, 19th September 2013
“Performed here by the Choir of Queen’s College, Oxford, David Bednall’s Welcome All Wonders is a new Christmas Oratorio designed to tell the nativity story from Advent to Epiphany, using texts from Pope, Milton and Rossetti, as well as liturgical sources. Organ lends gravitas and the trumpet invokes nobility, allowing the choral arrangements space to tell the story without orchestral clutter: the two combine for a sombre “Prelude” which leads into the choral “Alleluia”, the single repeated word subjected to various vocal techniques over shifting metres. It’s all beautifully rendered, albeit a touch short on joy and long on darkness, reaching its peak in this respect with the nine-minute “Slaughter of the Innocents”.”
The Independent, 21st December 2013
“The Queen’s College, Oxford is renowned for its wide-ranging and imaginative repertory, ranging from Renaissance and Baroque works to new commissions. This first recording on Signum – under director Owen Rees – takes its title from the eponymous work by English composer David Bednall, commissioned and premiered by the choir in 2011. ‘Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Cantata’ is a large-scale work for choir, organ and trumpet spanning 15 movements over an hour and a quarter, that celebrates the Christmas story through an imaginative selection and juxtaposition of poetry and liturgical texts. Your reviewer wears several hats, all of which he raises to applaud this piece. As a listener I thoroughly enjoyed it and am pleased to report that Mr Bednall continues to show his gift as a composer who understands melody and harmony, making this an easy listen without descending into easy listening. As a supporter of live music I would be happy to pay (or make a suggested donation) to hear this performed by any of my local choral societies. And as a member of a community choir I would love to try to perform this myself. I am confident that our leading soprano could cope although perhaps not as well as Olivia Clarke on this recording. However the piece does feature a trumpet, here played by Simon Desbruslais. ‘Welcome All Wonders’ is a vocal piece but the ornamentation supplied by the solo trumpet does add a great deal of interest and I feel that a live performance without a sufficiently skilled trumpeter would fall flat. That, however, is a challenge for another day. For now I shall enjoy this recording and recommend that any listeners with an interest in contemporary choral music seek it out at the earliest opportunity.”
Steven Whitehead, Cross Rhythms Website, November 2013, 9/10
“A welcome wonder indeed – a Christmas disc for grown-ups! This spirited and engaging work is a homage to English choral music of the 20th century by a gifted composer and organist in his mid-thirties. Billed as “a Christmas cantata” ‘Welcome All Wonders’ springs from the example of creating multi-sectioned sacred works by composers like Britten, Howells and Leighton, all of whom have influenced Bednall’s style. The 15-movement piece, running at 80 minutes, is scored for organ, choir and trumpet. In tracing the narrative from Advent to Epiphany, Bednall sets liturgical texts as well as some fine poetry by, amongst others, Pope, Milton, Longfellow and Christina Rosetti. In choosing words that deal with both the joys and sorrows of the Christmas story, there is enough musical light and shade to sustain listener interest. Under the attentive direction of Owen Rees, the Queen’s College Choir makes the most of Bednall’s approachable yet interesting score. Singing with all the vocal acuity expected of an Oxbridge choir, they relish the musical changes that the composer’s eclectic yet decidedly English style brings, whether it be the dancing rhythms (think Leighton and Mathias), the lush harmonies (think Howells) or darker moods (think Britten). The festive final climax comes with the proclamation of the work’s title (taken from a poem by Richard Crashaw). This grown-up Christmas disc deserves a warm welcome.”
Limelight Magazine, December 2013
“But tradition need not be honoured slavishly and it’s good to hear a different, if not quite revisionist, approach to the nativity in David Bednall’s notably tough-minded cantata Welcome All Wonders (Signum SIGCD 335), which restores the Slaughter of the Innocents to the centre of the drama, not its fringes.”
Choir and Organ, November/December 2013
“I’ve heard quite a lot of David Bednall’s choral music on CD. I think this is the fourth disc devoted to his music, two of which were discs of short pieces performed by Matthew Owens and his excellent Wells Cathedral Choir (review ~ review). Most impressive of all was his Requiem of 2007/08 (review). In addition, individual short pieces by him have cropped up on a number of mixed recital programmes by various choirs; it’s clear that Bednall is making quite a name for himself.
He is an alumnus of The Queen’s College and a past organ scholar there in the late 1990s so it was highly appropriate that the college should commission him to write this new work The choir there gave the first performance of it in November 2011, making this recording shortly thereafter. The piece, which comprises fifteen movements, is scored for SATB choir, organ and solo trumpet – here the superb Simon Desbruslais.
In his very useful booklet note David Bednall explains that whilst he covers the main episodes in the Christmas story between Advent and the Epiphany there is no narrative per se on the grounds that the essential story is so well known. Indeed, not only is there no Gospel narrative but there is only one Biblical text in the entire score, the great text from St. John’s Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word’; this is set at the start of the last movement. So the texts principally comment and reflect on the Christmas story. Bednall has not shrunk from choosing texts that illustrate what might be termed the darker side of Christmas – the massacre of the Holy Innocents, the foreshadowing of Christ’s Passion and Death; this is no bland, saccharine Christmas piece and I wholeheartedly applaud that. When reviewing an earlier Bednall disc from the Wells Cathedral choir I quoted something which the composer had written that particularly caught my eye. Speaking of how important to him are the words he sets he said that his aim is “to try to deliver an emotional charge in order to challenge the listener to think afresh about the words being sung.” He’s held true to that tenet in much of his work that I’ve heard in the last few years and it’s well in evidence here too.
The chosen texts range quite widely; the sources include Alexander Pope, Isaac Watts, Longfellow, Milton and Christina Rossetti as well as a couple of Magnificat antiphons from the Christmas season and some old Latin hymns. If this seems a disparate selection all I can say is that it has been woven into a satisfying whole. The title of the work comes from some lines by Richard Crawshaw (1612- 1649) which are set in the last movement.
As for the music, David Bednall says that he wanted to make the music “emotive and immediate” and I’d say he’s succeeded. He mentions Howells as a composer for whose music he has a great love and that’s apparent from time to time in this score. The benign influence of several other English composers is evident too but it would be folly to listen to the piece thinking ‘that reminds me of so- and-so’ for Bednall is very much his own man. What I will say is that one can hear in this score the work of someone who has spent much of his life steeped in the world of English composers and, especially, in the music of the English church. He has clearly absorbed much of that through his musical pores. That said, one also notes an occasional Gallic tinge, especially in the organ part: one might expect that of someone whose organ teachers have included Naji Hakim and David Briggs.
Bednall says that most of the movements can be performed separately, for services, perhaps, or smaller scale concerts. I can see several of them readily having an independent life. In my view the prime candidate is the thirteenth movement, ‘But peaceful was the night’. This is a setting for unaccompanied choir of three stanzas from Milton’s Ode on the morning of Christ’s Nativity. Bednall comments that it is “in some ways the emotional heart of the work.” It’s a very beautiful composition which has a beguiling soprano melody set, in the first two stanzas, over warm choral harmonies. In the final stanza this melody really comes into its own as it’s heard while the rest of the choir cosset it with a hushed wordless cushion of harmonies. Beautifully sung by the Queen’s College choir, this is a winning little gem which I can see becoming an established part of the Christmas repertoire of many choirs: I hope so.
I’ve singled out that movement but there are several other very successful sections. The eighth movement, ‘I saw a stable’ is another charmer for unaccompanied choir. The music is very simple and highly effective. Also effective, though very different in character, is ‘Oh! little blade of grass’, the music of which Bednall describes as “dense and tortured”. It seems to me to take further the sort of complex harmonic language that Howells was using in his last years. ‘Ye heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour’ is the second of two settings of lines by Alexander Pope. This, Bednall says, “presents a utopian vision of peace”. It’s a very tranquil piece which is beautifully imagined for voices accompanied by a gentle, radiant organ part.
Not all is beauty, however. I said that Bednall does not shy away from the darker side of the Christmas story. His telling of the massacre of the Holy Innocents is highly imaginative. First he enlists Longfellow to depict Herod and his men in dramatic and unsettling music – Herod’s words are sung by a solo bass and the solo is well taken here. The really imaginative part of the setting comes later, however; unison female voices sing verses by Christina Rossetti over a quiet drone in the male voices. The ladies’ music is a poignant, deliberately stark monody – only in the third of the four stanzas does the line becomes two-part – and after each verse the trumpet delivers an equally stark comment. It’s desolate and affecting stuff.
Rightly, though, the score contains a good deal of music that conveys the joy of Christmas. Indeed, the very first choral movement, after an instrumental introduction, is a predominantly lively and extrovert a cappella piece setting just one word: ‘Alleluia’. There’s some buoyant, rhythmically vital music, again for unaccompanied choir, in the eleventh movement, ‘Tribus miraculis ornatum’, which is the Magnificat antiphon for the Feast of the Epiphany. And the final movement, ‘In the beginning’, ends the work on a joyous, indeed ecstatic note. Here the celebration – and the volume – builds incrementally in a most exciting fashion, the organ increasingly majestic, until on the very last chord the sopranos and the trumpet climb to a top C, ensuring that Welcome all Wonders ends in a mood of unqualified jubilation.
Welcome all Wonders is an inventive, resourceful and impressive piece. The choral writing is assured and imaginative. The trumpet part adds colour and brilliance to many of the sections. Until the last movement the organ part is more restrained than I’d expected but it’s still a significant contributor to the score and, as one would expect from a skilled organist-composer, it’s an imaginative part.
The performance is excellent. The choir of Queen’s College numbers 32 singers (11/7/6/8). They sing the work splendidly and with great assurance and commitment. The sound is fresh and clear, the choir achieving a satisfying blend and very good diction. There are several opportunities for choir members to sing solos and all do very well. The only slight reservation – and it is a small one – is an occasional lack of weight in the male voices, unsurprising, perhaps, in an undergraduate ensemble. However, the singers have clearly been trained very well by Owen Rees and I’m sure David Bednall was delighted by their advocacy. I don’t know how the organ duties were shared out between the two organists, presumably the college’s Organ Scholars, but the organ accompaniments are clearly in good hands – and feet. As for the important trumpet part, it’s played brilliantly by Simon Desbruslais. His tone is bright, silvery and exciting to hear; for much of the time he’s required to play strongly but he’s equally capable of silky soft tone and on those occasions the trumpet sound falls very pleasingly on the ear. The sessions took place in Keble College Chapel, no doubt on account of the organ there. The production was in the very safe hands of Adrian Peacock and David Hinitt so it’s almost a given that the recording would be admirable … and it is.
Welcome all Wonders is an original and very rewarding addition to the Christmas choral repertoire.”
John Quinn, MusicWeb International, November 2013
