Recordings

Ikon II

In 1997, the Holst Singers and Stephen Layton produced a disc that immediately became a cult classic and a best-seller. IKON, a selection of great Russian choral music from the 19th century, dazzled with its grand, opulent beauty. Now the same forces return with IKON II. Many of the works recorded on this disc are by composers whose names will not be familiar – but the extraordinary quality of the music is unmistakable and immediately enthralling.

“Impeccable… so, so well-conceived” BBC Radio 3 Record Review

Reviews

‘The remarkable performances of the Holst Singers, securely balanced on the tightrope between pianissimo sensitivity and full-throated veneration… The intonation is faultless across all the registers here, diction is clear and the choral sound is beautifully homogenized – there doesn’t seem to be a weak voice anywhere. Nor is there a weak piece: all 22 items blaze with devout passion. With the volume turned up, one after another brought up the hair on the back of my neck … This is a glorious CD and it should bring you much pleasure’ (International Record Review)

‘The programme is scrupulously prepared, with excellent pronunciation, idiomatic timbres anda fine fusion of ardent communication and sensitive shaping. The disc was recorded in the superb acoustic of All Hallows, Gospel Oak, London, and Ivan Moody’s informative essay is an indispensable bonus’ (Gramophone)

‘Performing with insight and commendable Russian sonority, the Holst Singers have cast their net wide in this survey of Orthodox Church music. The main focus is the pre-Revolution period of the early 20th century, with Pavel Chesnokov generously represented. But he and other composers found ways of reconciling inventiveness with the Church’s constraints, and such rarities as César Cui’s Magnificat, together with works by Shvedov, Kastalsky and more familiar Rachmaninoff, make for a fascinating spectrum’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘In hymns, prayers, invocations and anthems. These composers draw on ancient chant to produce music which is always passionate … Beautifully captured by the Holst Singers’ (Choir & Organ Magazine)

Tormis: Choral Music

The Holst Singers are acclaimed as one of England’s greatest amateur choirs. The talent and commitment of the individual singers and the leadership of their mercurial conductor, Stephen Layton, ensure that their performances are always of the very highest standards.

Veljo Tormis is—along with Arvo Pärt—Estonia’s most famous living composer, holding an almost mystic status in his home country. He is also the passionate and practical torch-bearer for folk-singing revival, and the integration of an ancient cultural inheritance into thoroughly modern, post-Soviet lives. Interestingly, he trained at the Moscow conservatoire and was steeped in Soviet instruction during his early musical life. His music is almost all written for choirs; few composers have ever been so committed to one genre. Tormis’s choral specialism marks him out from Bartók, Kodály, Vaughan Williams and Grainger, whose pioneering interest in folksong was ultimately less purist given their use of the tunes alone in instrumental or orchestral works: for Tormis, the words and the music are inseparable.

The Holst Singers were recently invited to Estonia to perform Tormis’s music—a great honour, and a mark of their mastery of the repertoire.

Awards

Gramophone Recommends

Reviews

‘Stephen Layton and his superlative choir deliver an inspiring programme of a capella choral works by the Estonian composer. The music springs from the East European folk tradition – rhythmic underlay, biting harmonies, melodies seemingly smoothed by time. The British choristers tackle these alien sounds with conviction, precision, passion, perfect tuning across the octaves and much variety of tone colour and dynamics. Exciting moments abound: the Livonian songs are wittily profound, the final chord of Heather is a golden climax, while Childhood Memory proves that the choir harbours top soloists as well. It’s hard to believe that they all have day jobs’ (The Times)

Pierre Villette: Choral Music

This pioneering new recording—a showcase for the virtuoso talents of the Holst Singers—presents all fifteen of Villette’s unaccompanied choral works and his two motets for choir and organ.

Pierre Villette might best be regarded as a stylistic bridge between Debussy and Fauré on the one hand and Poulenc and Messiaen on the other. A world rich in the familiarities of Gregorian chant infuses much of his choral output, while ambitious chromaticisms and textural gestures create effects which are at once spiritual and sensuous. This is the music of private prayer set in the context of an incense-filled Gothic Über-Cathedral.

Under their long-standing director of music Stephen Layton, the Holst Singers have established themselves firmly at the top of the country’s league of chamber choirs. This new programme can only enhance their justly deserved reputation.

Reviews

‘The Holst Singers create great clouds of texture, which surge, form, and melt before your ears … For a bag of musical bonbons à la violette, this disc can’t be beaten’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Whether chant-inspired, leaning towards a jazz idiom or chromaticism, the music is an unusual hybrid. The Holst Singers are eloquent and beguiling under the thoughtful direction of Stephen Layton’ (Choir and Organ)

‘This is simply gorgeous music which has not so much moments of sublime beauty as virtually no passages which aren’t, both singly and cumulatively, utterly enchanting’ (International Record Review)

‘Shades of Messiaen, Duruflé, Gregorian chant and jazz tinge Villette’s elegant, unpretentious motets, sensitively performed here’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘If I was going to choose a record company to commit Villette’s music to disc, then Hyperion would be my first choice and the team invovled in this production do not let composer or musicians down, capturing the mood so well … it is a cracking CD’ (Cathedral Music)

‘The Holst Singers’ blend, diction, intonation, and ensemble are uniformly up there with the best, as is the engineering of the recording’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘The Holst Singers – Stephen Layton’s ‘other’ great choir – is every bit as skilled, sonorous and sensitive as his better-known group, Polyphony. Very few conductors manage this sort of exquisite phrasing, subtle nuance, gleaming sound, and absolute control that you hear from any of Layton’s choirs. Hyperion records them beautifully and offers its usual complete and classy booklet’ (American Record Guide)

‘This recording offers the most comprehensive compilation of Villette’s choral music in print. Layton’s interpretation skillfully supports the composer’s intent, especially in terms of text-music relationships. The Holst Singers’ diversity of tone color, pristine intonation, exploration of dynamic range, and nuances of rhythmic flexibility are consistently excellent…Layton’s balance of every tone in the twenty-part texture achieves an outstanding sonority, a highlight of the recording…I recommend this recording enthusiastically and without reservation’ (Choral Guide, USA)

Schnittke: Choir Concerto & Minnesang

Unquestionably one of the choral masterpieces of the 20th century, Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Mixed Chorus is an extended setting (about 40 minutes’ duration) of words from ‘The Book of Lamentations’ by the Armenian monk Grigor Narekatsi (951-1003). Written in 1984/5, it is scored for a very large choir and for this recording Holst Singers were augmented by large contingents of London’s finest singers.

Like Wagner (in Tannhäuser) and Richard Strauss (in Guntram), Schnittke was attracted to the poetry and music of the minnesingers, the German medieval tradition of courtly lyrics and secular monophony. At first he planned to write an instrumental piece (intended for his third violin concerto) based on songs by the minnesingers, but he later rejected this idea and decided to keep these vocal melodies for vocal music. The result is Minnesang (1980/81) for 52 voices (18 sopranos, 12 altos, 10 tenors and 12 basses).

The third work on the disc is the haunting and evocative Voices of Nature, from 1972. This is a vocalise—that is, without words—for ten female voices and vibraphone. Its first public performance took place in spring 1975. Superb performances directed by the recipient of the recent Gramophone Award for the Best Choral Record of the Year (Britten’s Sacred and Profane, CDA67140), Stephen Layton.

Awards

Best of 2002 – BBC Music Magazine

Reviews

‘A superb and revealing performance of one of Schnittke’s most approachable works … The technical skill of the Holst Singers is truly impressive … there is a complete sense of security and enjoyment from the highest floating soprano to the lowest bass rumblings’ (Gramophone)

‘One of the most imposing of all Schnittke’s later works … superbly performed’ (The Guardian)

‘if the concerto does not ultimately go down as one of the masterpieces of the late twentieth century choral repertoire, I shall be staggered’ (International Record Review)

‘spinetingling … music great for contemplation, and a terrific showcase for the choir’s stamina’ (The Times)

‘superbly performed’ (The Guardian)

‘This is a disc that reaffirms Schnittke as one of the most significant composers of the last century and the Holst Singers as a leading chorus on the international stage’ (bbc.co.uk)

‘the music, direct in manner and imposing in effect, should appeal to anyone who already loves the sacred choral works of Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky’ (Irish Times)

‘high vocal standards … A fine introduction to some rare and satisfying repertoire’ (The Observer)

‘Stephen Layton’s Holst Singers really show their mettle … Schnittke fans will want to hear this; and anyone else who’s curious about what one of the 20th Century’s more intriguing and inventive composers was up to during the 1980’s also should check it out’ (ClassicToday.com)

‘The Holst Singers have done an excellent job … They have a beautiful, cool sound in the best British tradition, and the deep bass voices bring forth some glorious noises … This disc is hugely welcome … fascinating and, ultimately, uplifting’ (musicweb.uk.net)

Linley: The Song of Moses

Thomas (The Younger) Linley
The Song of Moses
Let God Arise

The Holst Singers
Parley of Instruments

With Andrew Dale Forbes, Robin Blaze, Sophie Daneman, Andrew King, Julia Gooding

Conducted by Peter Holman

Ikon

James Bowman regards this disc as the most inspiring he has recently recorded; and the Managing Director of Musica Russica writes: ‘I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project … I hope this will not be the last recording of Russian music by the excellent Holst Singers!’

The tradition of Russian choral music stands today as rich and diverse as at any time in its long history, and this recording brings movements from the Liturgies by Tchaikovsky and Gretchaninov together with seven beautiful pieces by Georgy Sviridov, including three Sacred Choruses which he successfully steered through Communist prohibition under the guise of incidental music for the theatre.

As an appendix, works by Górecki, Pärt and Nystedt show how the Orthodox tradition has affected neighbouring countries (Poland, Estonia and Sweden, respectively); Immortal Bach is a particularly evocative work—a ‘free’ exploration of Bach’s chorale ‘Komm, süsser Tod’.

Reviews

‘Sensitive readings of the utmost sensitivity and control’ (Gramophone)

‘Uniformly charismatic performances. Fine engineering and notes too. Highly recommended’ (Fanfare, USA)

Britten: Christ’s Nativity & other choral works

This recording brings together a selection of Britten’s choral music for Christmastide, a season much enjoyed by the composer to the end of his life and one in which he celebrated in an extraordinarily diverse manner. The earliest work isA Hymn to the Virgin, composed in 1930 to an anonymous fourteenth-century text. Christ’s Nativity is a fascinating work from Britten’s student days which is here receiving its premiere recording.

A Boy was Born has always been a central part of the repertoire. The sequence of five highly individual and virtuoso variations are set for mixed voices and boys’ choir while A Shepherd’s Carol, written in the 1940s after Britten’s return from America reflects the easy, laid-back approach of American popular music of that period.

Reviews

‘Interpretaciones tan refrescantes como escrupulosas’ (CD Compact, Spain)

‘Remarquable! Les Holst Singers se révèlent être de remarquables interprètes de leur cher répertoire national. Cette anthologie atteste du niveau vocal et musical de ce choeur (et donc de leur chef Stephen Layton)’ (Diapason, France)

‘Their commitment to what they are singing rings out with every note. A Boy was Born is imbued with more ravishing feeling than I would have thought possible’ (Organists’ Review)

Vaughan Williams: Over hill, over dale

Vaughan Williams’s small-scale choral works are a comparatively lesser-known aspect of his art. The majority of these compositions arose from his folksong-collecting activities at the turn of the century; this recording brings some of his finest folksong arrangements together with other a cappella works. They cover the whole of the composer’s long career. The Holst Singers are the foremost amateur choir in London. Under their musical director Stephen Layton they regularly perform on Radio 3 and Classic FM and in the major concert venues. The choir is joined for several songs by the renowned soloists Ian Bostridge and Michael George.

Reviews

‘The Holst Singers … sing with a spellbinding sense of atmosphere and crystal-clear textures. Strongly recommended for all admirers of Vaughan Williams and fine choral work’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘This new Vaughan Williams collection complements the Holst Singers’ critically acclaimed 1993 CD of Holst partsongs (CDA66705) and is equally impressive … Masterly, but also supremely musical … The Shakespeare settings are outstanding’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Une réussite artistique exemplaire’ (Répertoire, France)

‘En todo momento, los cantores de Layton demuenstran un dominio total y lenguaje musical de Vaughan Williams … Un hermoso disco’ (CD Compact, Spain)

‘A most worthwhile enterprise, strongly recommended’ (Fanfare, USA)

Boughton: Bethlehem

Awards

Gramophone Editor’s Choice

Reviews

Holst: This have I done for my true love

Reviews

‘Fascinating… The Holst Singers cover themselves in distinction. A gem’ (CDReview)

‘A real joy to listen through without interruption’ (Gramophone)

Lie strewn the white flocks

Reviews

‘I loved this record … and the programme itself is a delight’ (Gramophone)

‘A delightful coupling of rare British choral works’ (BBC Record Review)

‘This attractive English collection is a specially welcome addition to the CD catalogue’ (Gramophone)

‘With glowing sound and very attractive works for coupling, this is an outstanding bargain issue’ (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs)