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The singing is expressive throughout the recording space suits the music perfectly: there is a good sense of space and the building carries the voices well. This excellent disc is a worthy addition to the Boreas catalogue, and for that matter, any CD collection.
Choir Schools Today
Independent record producers Boreas Music, based in York, have come up trumps with a fine recording of choral music by Thomas Luis de Victoria.
The recording opens with the Motet O quam gloriosum followed by the mass of the same name. They add the hymn Christe redemptor omnium to end this section before concluding with the mighty Requiem Aeternam, written for the funeral of Victoria 's patron the Dowager Empress Maria of Spain in 1603.
The Ebor Singers were founded in 1995 and is a group made up of early music vocal specialists from the University of York, capitalising on the already great reputation that the city has in this sphere of music. Indeed, the quality, range of expression and mood of the singing is first rate, and can compete with any of the Oxbridge and London professional early music choirs. Paul Gameson is to be admired for the way he has persuaded The Ebor Singers to produce such a close-knit sound. This allows the resonant harmonic flow to despatch a greater depth of meaning, while the delicious dissonances used to highlight certain textual points, combine to produce a homogenous and convincing sound that grows organically from this finely balanced choir. I look forward to hearing more from The Ebor Singers in the future and I recommend this recording to you whole-heartedly.
(David Alker, The Organist)
4 stars
Anyone who has heard The Ebor Singers in concert will be fully aware of their prowess. Their founder-conductor, Paul Gameson, has moulded a tight-knit ensemble, while also finding a distinctive voice in York's already crowded choral scene. Victoria, Spain's leading Renaissance composer, is excellently represented here. The Missa O Quam Gloriosum is preceded by a motet on which it is based, the latter taken unconventionally fast. Yet this brings benefits in vitality and rhhythmic veve, which spill into the mass itself. The incomparable Requiem, representing the Iberian Renaissance in full flower, sounds sumptuous in the welcoming acoustic of St Chad's, York. But Gameson is not afraid to inject drama, for example the Offertory, rightly keeping the mood optimistic, never gloomy. A triumphant achievement, too, for York's new label, Boreas.
(Martin Dreyer, York Evening Press)
The purity and youthful freshness of The Ebor Singers suits these fantastic choral works very well indeed. Please record more.
Choir Schools Today
A delightful release from The Ebor Singers.
...an intoxicatingly relaxed ambience.
Will Dawes
Church Music Quarterly
(recommended release)
5 stars
Not every young composer has the opportunity to have their music performed alongside an established older generation and survive the experience. Kerry Andrew emerges unscathed. Dusk Songs is a setting of 12 liturgical texts for Compline. Influenced by world music and non-Western vocal techniques, she is able to create a meditative mood for the ending of the day. Andrew's flowing vocal lines and her deep feeling for text presage the emergence of a considerable talent. Moody's Canticum canticorum are three atmospheric settings influenced by Eastern Orthodox liturgical chant that maintains the reflective spirit of the CD. MacMillan's evocative A Child's Prayer and Christus Vincit touch the senses to bring a radiant ending to this inspirational programme. The Ebor Singers are magnificent throughout. I can't wait to hear more from this young group.
(Shirley Ratcliffe, Choir and Organ)
4 stars
Considering the anti-Christian ethos in the air these days, it is remarkable - and heartening - that so many younger composers are still writing for the church. There are two with University of York connections on this disc, Kerry Andrew and Ivan Moody. Andrew responded to an Ebor Singers commission for Anglican compline last year with 12 Dusk Songs, the disc's title work. Beautifully tailored to voices, the pieces are mainly tranquil. Exceptions include the vivid Gloria in the Nunc Dimittis and the controlled urgency of Hail, Gladdening Light. Moody's Orthodox leanings inspire three, more traditional, Latin settings from the Song of Songs, with warm, almost fruity, harmony well suited to the text. James MacMillan's fertile Catholic faith provides two anthems in prayerful, astringent vein, but exultant at the close of Christus Vincit.
The Ebor Singers under Paul Gameson adapt fluently throughout.
(Martin Dreyer, York Evening Press)
The singing is excellent throughout, with the younger ensembles Ebor and Juice more than matching the more established Hilliards and Red Byrd....
In recent years when film directors have attempted new versions of classic tales they have often emphasised a return to the story's source (whether justified or not), hence Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula . Roger Marsh's Albert Giraud's Pierrot Lunaire is however not such an attempt to replace the classic Schoenberg cycle of a similar name, instead he has created a distinctive work of his own. As Marsh explains in the liner notes, he wished to write a piece that would draw attention to Giraud's poetry which in his view has been sidelined by the shadow cast by Schoenberg's piece and the German reworking of the text by Hartleben.
Marsh sets all fifty poems from the cycle to form an evening length quasi-theatrical piece mostly featuring a cappella ensembles (the piece grew out of a Hilliard Ensemble summer school). The main musical point of reference is the French choral tradition down the ages, although shorn of the more indulgent harmonic excesses that may suggest to some listeners. The vocal style is closer to early music, and occasionally the full-throatedness of Bulgarian music, with only the episodes for Linda Hirst making reference to the Schoenberg albeit filtered via Berio and Boulez. The singing is excellent throughout, with the younger ensembles Ebor and Juice more than matching the more established Hilliards and Red Byrd.
Marsh's desire to draw attention to Giraud's words is emphasised by his use of a narrator in several of the movements providing a translation which runs parallel to the music. And here we come to a matter which may sharply split the opinion of listeners: The narrator's voice mostly exists in a distinctively separate studio space from the singers, giving the impression of an internal monologue from a radio play (Marsh is noted for his productions of the works of James Joyce on the Naxos label). For this listener the presence of the narrator popping up becomes a slight irritation - the music more than stands on its own feet, Marsh's setting of French is always extremely clear, and there are excellent translations in the CD booklet. The recording ends up in a half way house between a document of a performance and a radiophonic work, and I would have preferred if it had leaned in one or other direction (perhaps a DVD would have solved this, with the option of a narration track which delves further into the evocative electroacoustic hints which are scattered through the piece such as the piano delirium of 'Valse de Chopin').
But gripes aside there is much attractive music to be heard here, and I hope the chance for the piece to be presented live again will arise soon.
(Stephen Chase, New Notes, May 2007)
In his Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg set just 21 of the 50 'rondels bergamasques' that the Belgian Albert Giraud had published in his collection of the same name in 1884. The poems inhabit a fantastical world, unified by the figure of Pierrot and other characters from the commedia dell'arte, but full of extraordinary imagery that would not be out of place in the work of the surrealists almost half a century later. Roger Marsh's settings grew out of a summer school in 2000, for which he was commissioned to write pieces for each of the participating vocal ensembles to learn and which were then performed as a composite work at the end of the course. Marsh set 22 of the texts, and over the next two years added the other 28.
The sequence is wonderfully varied. Some of the numbers use a full mixed choir, The Ebor Singers, others the all-male quartet of the Hilliard Ensemble, the trios of Juice and Red Byrd, or different combinations of all of them. Most settings are unaccompanied, but instruments - piano, organ, strings - make their appearances too. One layer of the texture always delivers Giraud's text in the original French, but an English translation is always present too - either introduced into the musical textures by different voices, or recited by an actor - the composer's son, Joe Marsh. Perspectives constantly change; it's diverting and surprising, worlds away from Schoenberg's overpowering work yet still mysteriously close to the essence of Giraud's unique imagination.
4 stars
(Andrew Clements, 6 April 2007, The Guardian)
It is not unusual to find an academic book that is the fruit of doctoral research. Much rarer is the CD spin-off. The Ebors' latest offering, subtitled `French sacred choral works of the 17th century', gives us 15 tracks taken from the territory of Paul Gameson's thesis. As the group's founder-director - and member of its tenor section - Gameson has been injecting vivid life into this largely forgotten corner of the repertory.
Two-thirds of the disc is devoted to Guillaume Bouzignac, who was born in the late 16th century and lived until about 1660. He rescued sacred music during the reign of Louis XIII from its provincial roots by injecting new Spanish and Italian flavours. The results are tasty indeed. He has a flair for rhythmic intensity, but can equally conjure a devotional atmosphere. Most of his texts are taken from the psalms or the New Testament, but often with little references to France. Throwing wide the gates to let the French king enter in - the title track, inspired by Psalm 24 - might be seen as bordering on sacrilege. No matter, the music is uniformly splendid.
The Ebors are blessed with a firm, clear soprano line, heard to considerable advantage in the beautifully controlled serenity of the motet for compline, In Pace. The acoustic of St Chad's Church, York adds further depth.
Bouzignac's fondness for dialogue comes across neatly in pieces geared to the Christmas shepherds and Herod's massacre of the innocents. A bouncy Benedicamus by the rather older Eustache Du Caurroy, a Magnificat by Henri Du Mont with lively tenor soloists, and a noble Salve Regina by Charpentier, add lustre to a disc that will appeal to connoisseurs and newcomers alike.
(Martin Dreyer, October 28 2005, Yorkshire Evening Press, 4 stars)
A disc of sheer perfection from the York-based Ebor Singers as they explore the world of seventeenth century sacred music from France. The hauntingly simple melodies of Guillaume Bouzignac, with Ebor's sopranos sending music floating on air, have a serenity that transports us to a world of peace. The vocal soloists are superb, and with organ accompaniment ideally balanced, this recording made in a spacious church captures a timeless atmosphere.
(David Denton, September 30 2005,Yorkshire Post)