Mar Umbert Kimura piano
Somerville College Choir, Oxford
Will Dawes director
RESONUS Res10380
Christopher Churcher (b.2004) is a young composer who is currently studying music at the University of Oxford where is he is a choral scholar with Somerville College Choir. This body is unique among Oxford college choirs as it has no denominational basis. The composer identifies this as a factor in his own development as a composer. In his note he states that it has ‘offered me a fresh perspective on what a choir can be.’ He goes on to say that it, ‘offers a space that invites difference, openness and imagination.’
This much is evident from the composer’s choice of texts which embrace three well-known carols, There is no Rose, Away in a Manger and‘In the Bleak Midwinter as well as a group of Pride Motets. This was a commission by the College Choir for their 2023 Pride Contemplation and, in the composer’s words, attempts, ‘an expression of queer lived experience through choral music…(encompassing) stigma, shame and self-acceptance; vulnerability, yearning and euphoria; the joy of loving freely, of being known and accepted without hesitation.’
From the expressive point of view, this is a daunting undertaking. One only has to recall the constraints under which Benjamin Britten had to work to become conscious of how far we seem to have travelled in sixty years or so. A significant number of his operas present the struggles of an outsider for acceptance in a community. (Billy Budd, Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave, to name but three.) The parallels in these works with the experience of an artist such as Britten were clear, but given the mores of the time, could safely be ignored or disregarded.
Churcher’s settings of these unequivocally bold expressions of same-sex passion make it clear that the time for polite euphemisms is surely over. Perhaps the most startling of the group is the setting of Richard Barnfield’s Sonnet 16, My Love, which is the most forthright of them.
Churcher has a wide expressive range and the use of the piano in some of the pieces is welcome. Mar Umbert Kimura’s contribution is distinguished, although in places the recorded balance seemed to favour the piano too much. Elsewhere Somerville College’s Choir negotiate the demanding vocal writing with complete assurance. Will Dawes’ direction seems straightforward and unfussy, and tuning and intonation are consistently beyond reproach. I found this a most rewarding disc and Christopher Churcher is a talent from which much more may be expected.
Review by Martyn Strachan