Andrew Nethsingha on 'Magnificat' - The Choir of St John's

Andrew Nethsingha - Director of Music for The Choir of St John's - introduces the Choir's recording 'Magnificat', which includes Canticles by Stanford, Leighton, Sumsion, Howells Jackson and Tippett.

The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

[R_Jackson]

I like the Director of Music's metaphor for the choral sound, as the sparkles of light on a changeable sea.

[MatthewPorter-hqmb]

The Stanford A Major Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis is gorgeous!

[erichgroat]

This disc is phenomenal, highlight of the year in any genre. Leighton's Canticle is impossible to sing perfectly, but they do it anyway. Go buy it!

[jonb]

There's a good reason that Stanford is the background to this "advert", rather than Tippett's formulaic dross and the rubbish (IMO) that Leighton produced. After all, one doesn't want to put off one's punters!
As Mr Nethsingha says, he wanted to provide something for all tastes, but why go so far down the road of disjointed dissonance with two settings that hardly show off the British choral tradition at its best? Far better to have another Stanford and another Howells - plenty to choose from there. Howells Coll Reg and Stanford in G would have been eminently suitable - the former is archetypal Howells brilliance and the latter is archetypal writing for treble solo.
However, if he wanted to stay with no more than one offering from any composer, there are all the Renaissance/Tudor works - Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, Purcell - glorious stuff. Then again, if he didn't want to go back so early but still wanted to keep things British, he still has many time-honoured settings to choose from - Ouseley, Murrill, Ireland, Brewer, Walmisley, Wood...
Gabriel Jackson is clearly an excellent and generally unpretentious composer, so his Truro service is a lovely inclusion, and demonstrates how modern works can fit seamlessly into the great tradition of beautiful, soul-satisfying sound as opposed to noise for the sake of noise and clash for the sake of clash.

So although I wish this wonderful, talented, hard-working choir and music director well, I certainly won't be buying the CD because I would not listen to four of its tracks. I thank heaven that although when I was a cathedral treble forty years ago we did some tough stuff, at least we didn't have to learn Leighton and Tippett.