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David Briggs has spent much time and persistent care in transcribing improvisations by Pierre Ccochereau, organist at Notre-Dame until his death in 1984. These he has folded into his own rich, harmonically adventurous and appealing Mass setting, itself borrowing in parts from the transcriptions, and into which he has inserted his own improvisations for Introit, Offertoire and Sortie. The recital...
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These works give the lie to the old adage that the natural enemy of the Brits is the French (actually, I think that was in an old episode of Yes, Prime Minister). David Briggs is deeply influenced both by his native traditions and by the French school of choral composers. Yet the result is something unique and the Trinity College Choir are magnificent. A moving experience....
All of you who have become convinced that any new music being written these days is only going to be either boring formulaic minimalism, atonal noise, eletronic manipulation, or worst of all, tepid crossover attempts to draw a different crowd, can all breathe a deep sigh of relief. David Briggs (b1962) has come to the rescue with this jaw-dropping Mass for Notre-Dame, composed in 2002.
David...
The London-based Holst Singers have been called “one of Britain’s foremost choirs”, and after hearing them at the weekend, I can see why. In this programme of Bach motets, they produced a bright, clear sound which, under conductor Stephen Layton’s authoritative direction, was tightly disciplined — here was a lesson in intelligent phrasing, flawless diction and perfectly executed timings. All this...
Any Handel oratorio needs to be an elastic entity in our day, just as it was in Handel’s. Considering the number of performances of Messiah given all over the world, it is doubly so for this work. Stephen Layton has chosen a male alto, Iestyn Davies — pristine of diction — and a soprano, Julia Doyle, whose sound has a purity and simplicity that remind us how Handel sometimes used a choirboy for...
This is a major release that choral music fans will not want to miss. Here is a program of modern works (most written within the last 10 years) that listeners can immediately appreciate for the obvious sophistication and freshness of the choral writing--unquestionably "modern" in sound and technique--but also for the uniformly successful and pertinent treatment of texts, the judicious and...