The Choir Of Magdalen College Oxford - Music For A May Morning (1996)

The programme is a very pleasant one, with madrigals and glees, lute songs and organ solos following each other in agreeable succession, providing variety without straying far from the theme of the May morning. A little of the Italian, French, German and Dutch schools guards against any charge of complacent insularity; the twentieth century makes its contribution along with the Middle Ages, the Tudor and the Jacobean. In the eighteenth century the 'merry concert' is said to have lasted about two hours, and allowing for breaks in between, while music was distributed or people dived for shelter during an early-morning shower, the 70-minute programme given here is probably comparable.

One wonders how the standard of performance compares. Certainly it is excellent here, the choir singing with unfailing freshness and stylistic polish. The trebles (successors to the white-robed, garlanded songsters of Holman Hunt's embarrassing masterpiece) have a distinctively bright tone, particularly well suited to Britten's Begone, dull care!, and the men make a surprisingly lovely thing out of Hatton's When ev'ning's twilight. The arrangements for the King's Singers go well, especially Bobby Shaftoe with its penny-whistle obbligato. Prominent among the soloists is the alto Robin Blaze, and Mark Heather, who also writes the insert-notes, sings a likeable baritone solo in She moved through the fair. The organ pieces, taken from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, are finely played, with attractive registration involving the use of the tremulant which I have to admit to a little surprise in finding not to be anachronistic. Busy also are the bell-ringers who sound their reveille with Stedman Caters and at the end pull for three minutes like what for reasons unknown used to be called billy-o.'