Classical Music: De Profundis: Choral Works by Parry and Elgar

De Profundis: Choral Works by Parry and Elgar

Sir Hubert Parry De profundis; God is our hope and strength
Sir Edward Elgar The Snow, Op 26, No 1; Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands, Op 27.

Sophie Bevan (soprano); Dominic Sedgwick (baritone)
Richard Smith, Rebecca Turner (violins); Rufus Frowde (piano
Hertfordshire Chorus
London Mozart Players / David Temple
Signum Classics SIGCD1005
https://signumrecords.com/

Signum pairs two composers who rarely feel like strangers to one another, and this disc makes the case for their kinship well. Parry's De Profundis — a large-scale, twelve-part setting of Psalm 130 — dominates proceedings, its long arc from penitence to consolation still capable of catching a listener off guard more than a century on. God Is Our Hope and Strength offers a shorter but no less confident companion piece, while Elgar supplies the disc's more intimate corners: the partsong The Snow and the folk-inflected Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands, both far removed from the pomp he's better known for.

Parry was commissioned to write a large choral and orchestral work for the 1891 Three Choirs Festival, and it was at Hereford Cathedral that he himself conducted the first performance of De Profundis. Scored for twelve-part choir, the piece might look forbidding on the page; in performance, it is anything but. Sophie Bevan's soprano is perfectly cast for the role, bringing excitement and expressive phrasing to the part without ever tipping into indulgence. The choral writing, too, is typically Parry: broad of gesture, assured in its handling of a large chorus, and building to a crescendo towards the close that will be instantly familiar to anyone who knows Blest Pair of Sirens. The opening of the fourth movement, in particular, shows off the quality of the choir's ensemble to fine effect.

God Is Our Hope and Strength, a setting of Psalm 46, is a shorter work but no less rewarding for it. Commissioned in 1913 for the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy, an important annual service at St Paul's Cathedral, it is scored for bass soloist, double SATB choir, organ and orchestra, and it really ought to be heard more often than it is. Every section of the chorus excels here, and the more one hears Parry writing on this scale, the more one appreciates his skill at orchestration and his gift for sumptuous, unforced majesty.

Elgar plays the companion role rather than the headline act, but is none the worse for it. The Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands are heard here in their original guise, with piano rather than orchestra, and the performance is both beautiful and thoroughly accomplished. The Snow, scored for two violins, is a charming miniature that says a great deal in a very short space.

Throughout, Signum's sound engineering is first class, doing full justice to a disc that makes as strong a case for Parry's choral mastery as any recording in recent memory.