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GRAMOPHONE (Awards/2014)
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Delphian 
DCD34137



Code barres / Barcode: 0801918341373

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Reviewer:  Malcolm Riley
 

I suspect that at least two of the previous directors of music at Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge, Patrick Hadley and Peter Tranchell, would have arched a bemused eyebrow when listening to this extraordinary musical odyssey. This is not to belittle what is a magnificent achievement, more to express wonderment at how far Geoffrey Webber has taken his adventurous present-day choir.

In collaboration with triplepiper, lyrist and Caius alumnus Barnaby Brown, Webber and his choristers have produced a generously filled disc that seeks to recreate three distinct sound worlds. They range from seventh-century Iona, through 10th-century chants from Irish foundations in Switzerland, to 14th-century antiphons and chants written in praise of St Columba. Since no music survives from the early Celtic church, inspiration has been drawn from stone carvings, illuminated manuscripts, prose writings and surviving holy texts. More recent recordings, transcribed from performances of traditional Hebridean psalm-singing on the Isle of Harris in 1965, have also informed and influenced much of the approach to the highly intricate vocal material.

Everything is performed with a missionary zeal. As a bonus there are two instrumental gems: Brown’s own recomposition of the pibroch The Desperate Battle of the Birds (2010) and, most striking of all, the duet on medieval Irish horns improvised by Malachy Frame and Simon O’Dwyer. Their instruments are based on an original eighth-century instrument recovered from the River Erne near Enniskillen during dredging work in 1956. As with the rest of the disc, hauntingly beautiful.



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