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Kyrie
Leoš Janáček, Francis Poulenc, Zoltán Kodály

The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

Kyrie

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212048924
Catnr: SIGCD 489
Release date: 06 October 2017
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Label
Signum Classics
UPC
0635212048924
Catalogue number
SIGCD 489
Release date
06 October 2017
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge return to disc with three 20th Century European masterpieces: Poulenc’s Mass in G Major (last recorded by the choir over 40 years ago under the iconic George Guest), Kodály’s Missa Brevis, and Janáček’s Otčenáš (Our Father). All works make use of highly distinctive musical languages, yet all three are tonal and highly accessible.

This disc follows the choir’s debut release of works by Jonathan Harvey Deo (SIGCD456), which was awarded the choral prize at the 2017 BBC Music Magazine Awards.

Artist(s)

The Choir of St John's College Cambridge

The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge is one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world, known and loved by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours and over 90 recordings. Founded in the 1670s, the Choir is known for its distinctive rich, warm sound, its expressive interpretations and its breadth of repertoire. Alongside these musical characteristics, the Choir is particularly proud of its happy, relaxed and mutually supportive atmosphere. The Choir is directed by Andrew Nethsingha following a long line of eminent Directors of Music, recently Dr George Guest, Dr Christopher Robinson and Dr David Hill. The Choir is made up of around 20 Choristers and Probationers from St John’s College School and 15 Choral Scholars who are members of...
more
The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge is one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world, known and loved by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours and over 90 recordings. Founded in the 1670s, the Choir is known for its distinctive rich, warm sound, its expressive interpretations and its breadth of repertoire. Alongside these musical characteristics, the Choir is particularly proud of its happy, relaxed and mutually supportive atmosphere. The Choir is directed by Andrew Nethsingha following a long line of eminent Directors of Music, recently Dr George Guest, Dr Christopher Robinson and Dr David Hill.
The Choir is made up of around 20 Choristers and Probationers from St John’s College School and 15 Choral Scholars who are members of St John’s College, its primary purpose being to enhance the liturgy and worship at daily services in the College Chapel. The Choir has a diverse repertoire spanning over 500 years of music. It is also renowned for championing contemporary music by commissioning new works, including compositions by Joanna Ward, Nico Muhly, James Burton and the College’s Composer in Residence Michael Finnissy. The Choir regularly sings Bach Cantatas liturgically with St John’s Sinfonia, its period instrument ensemble.
The Choir brings the ‘St John’s Sound’ to listeners around the world through its weekly webcasts (available at sjcchoir. co. uk).
In addition to regular radio broadcasts in this country and abroad, the Choir usually makes two CD recordings each year. In May 2016 the College launched its new ‘St John’s Cambridge’ recording label on which the Choir has released the BBC Music Magazine Award winning recording of Jonathan Harvey’s music: DEO; Christmas with St John’s; KYRIE (works by Poulenc, Kodály and Janáček); and Mass in G Minor (works by Vaughan Williams).
The Choir also maintains a busy schedule of concerts and tours internationally twice a year. It also performs regularly in the UK, with venues including Symphony Hall, Birmingham and Royal Festival Hall, London.

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Andrew Nethsingha (conductor)

Performing as a conductor and organist in North America, South Africa, Far East, and throughout Europe, Andrew Nethsingha has been Director of Music at St John’s College, Cambridge since 2007. His innovations at St John’s have included weekly webcasts and a termly Bach cantata series.  His recordings for Chandos have been well reviewed. Andrew Nethsingha received his early musical training as a chorister at Exeter Cathedral, where his father was organist for over a quarter of a century. He later studied at the Royal College of Music, where he won seven prizes, and at St John’s College, Cambridge. He held Organ Scholarships under Christopher Robinson, at St George’s Windsor, and George Guest, at St John’s, before becoming Assistant Organist at Wells...
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Performing as a conductor and organist in North America, South Africa, Far East, and throughout Europe, Andrew Nethsingha has been Director of Music at St John’s College, Cambridge since 2007. His innovations at St John’s have included weekly webcasts and a termly Bach cantata series. His recordings for Chandos have been well reviewed.

Andrew Nethsingha received his early musical training as a chorister at Exeter Cathedral, where his father was organist for over a quarter of a century. He later studied at the Royal College of Music, where he won seven prizes, and at St John’s College, Cambridge. He held Organ Scholarships under Christopher Robinson, at St George’s Windsor, and George Guest, at St John’s, before becoming Assistant Organist at Wells Cathedral. He was subsequently Director of Music at Truro and Gloucester Cathedrals. Other recent positions have included Artistic Director of the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival and Musical Director of the Gloucester Choral Society.

He has served as President of the Cathedral Organists’ Association. He has worked with some of the UK’s leading orchestras. Andrew’s concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra have included many of the major choral works: Mahler’s 8th Symphony, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Britten War Requiem, Brahms Requiem, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and The Kingdom, Walton Belshazzar’s Feast, Poulenc Gloria and Duruflé Requiem. He has also worked with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, Britten Sinfonia, the Aarhus Symfoniorkester and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Recent conducting engagements have included the BBC Proms, Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Tokyo Suntory Hall. He regularly runs choral courses in various countries, including France and the U.S.A.


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Joseph Wicks (organ)

Glen Dempsey (organ)

Composer(s)

Zoltán Kodály

Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages. Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as...
more

Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages.
Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as well, with his Psalmus hungaricus (1923) en his opera Háry János (1926) as the pinnacles of his musical career. The core of his body of work consists of vocal music, in particular works for choir, but his instrumental music is just as impressive. His master piece Laudes Organi, written one year before his death, truly proves that Kodály's creative energy stayed with him to the bitter end.


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Leoš Janáček

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer and folklorist. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jenůfa, which was premiered in 1904 in Brno. The success of Jenůfa (often called the 'Moravian national opera') at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen, the...
more
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer and folklorist. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style.
Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jenůfa, which was premiered in 1904 in Brno. The success of Jenůfa (often called the "Moravian national opera") at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, the rhapsody Taras Bulba, two string quartets, and other chamber works. Along with Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana, he is considered one of the most important Czech composers.

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Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was 'L'art pour l'art': they composed music for the sake of...
more
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was "L'art pour l'art": they composed music for the sake of music, without any 'meaning' or extramusical intents. In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works.

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Press

Play album Play album
01.
Mass in G, FP 89: Kyrie
03:09
(Francis Poulenc) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
02.
Mass in G, FP 89: Gloria
03:45
(Francis Poulenc) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
03.
Mass in G, FP 89: Sanctus
02:18
(Francis Poulenc) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
04.
Mass in G, FP 89: Benedictus
03:32
(Francis Poulenc) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
05.
Mass in G, FP 89: Agnus Dei
04:58
(Francis Poulenc) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
06.
Missa Brevis: Introitus
02:49
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
07.
Missa Brevis: Kyrie
02:26
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge
08.
Missa Brevis: Gloria
04:12
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
09.
Missa Brevis: Credo
06:21
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
10.
Missa Brevis: Sanctus
02:30
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
11.
Missa Brevis: Benedictus
03:36
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
12.
Missa Brevis: Agnus Dei
05:37
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
13.
Missa Brevis: Ite, Missa Est
03:16
(Zoltán Kodály) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks
14.
Otcená?, JW IV/29: Otce ná?
04:39
(Leoš Janáček) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Glen Dempsey, Anne Denholm
15.
Otcená?, JW IV/29: Bud' vule tvá
03:25
(Leoš Janáček) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Glen Dempsey, Anne Denholm
16.
Otcená?, JW IV/29: Chléb ná?
01:42
(Leoš Janáček) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Glen Dempsey, Anne Denholm
17.
Otcená?, JW IV/29: A odpust nám
03:19
(Leoš Janáček) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Glen Dempsey, Anne Denholm
18.
Otcená?, JW IV/29: Neuvod' nás
01:55
(Leoš Janáček) The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, Glen Dempsey, Anne Denholm
show all tracks

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