New London Chamber Choir, directed by Kieran Morris, showcased a host of contemporary carols at St. Eanswythe’s Church Folkestone on 23 November and on 1 December at St. James’ Church Islington. Reflecting the richness and variety of the Faber Music choral catalogue, all but two were commissioned by Stephen Cleobury for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge over the years.
Their programmed opened with John Woolrich’s Earth grown old, a setting of Christina Rossetti composed for the Winchester College Chapel Choir in 2003. Following the pattern of the poem, the carol slowly but surely comes to life, just as the earth “Nurses fire unfelt, unseen”, with the textural and rhythmic energies of the piece growing in intensity. The 3-minute carol was complemented by a commission for Nine Lessons and Carols – Spring in Winter (2001). An animated setting of poetry by Christopher Smart, Woolrich’s effervescent word setting captures the “glisten” the poem ascribes to the wintry landscape, sparkling with the promise of new life.
Tansy Davies also sets Rossetti in Christmas Eve (2011). The 6-minute carol makes resplendent use of the upper voices, dividing the soprano line into four treble parts, giving special focus to the ethereal gleam of the children’s voices so integral to the sound of the Choir of King’s College Cambridge at Christmas. These parts open the carol with playful, rhythmic figuration characteristic of the energetic groove that underlies Davies’ work.
Jonathan Harvey’s choral music also made two appearances in the concert. The Annunciation (2011), a 3½ minute setting of a poem by Edwin Muir for unaccompanied choir, was one of Harvey’s final works, and commissioned for the choir of his alma mater St. John’s College Cambridge and Andrew Nethsingha. Nethsingha has noted the way the music of The Annunciation is based on the Palestrina Stabat Mater, reflecting the way the moment of Christ’s immaculate conception anticipates the suffering of the Passion. The Choir of Merton College Oxford and Benjamin Nicholas also performed The Annunciation in their sold-out concert at Temple Church on 6 December.
NLCC also performed Harvey’s The Angels, setting Bishop John Taylor. The 4 ½-minute piece for double choir has, as Michael Downes puts it in his notes for the recording on Hyperion, “a sense of eternal calm…which moves between two-part canon and unison.” As the climax approach its textures grow in complexity, with a spellbinding contrary motion reserved for Harvey’s setting of ‘the spiralling turn of a dance’, before it concludes with a hushed, homophonic intoning of ‘Holy’.
The most longstanding work to feature was Nicholas Maw’s Swete Jesu (1992), a soothing, reflective setting of an anonymous 13th-century lyric. Maw felt the text an especially genuine and authentic expression of faith, reflected in open-hearted music: after a warm homophonic opening, tenors take over the melodic line accompanied by melismatic gestures; phrases are passed around the different parts, before a prayer-like return of the opening.