Philharmonia Voices & Orchestra
David Trippett conductor
PRIMA FACIE PFCD281
Those new to Downes should begin with this issue, rather than the two larger cantatas that I have also reviewed. All the works here are of great integrity and effectiveness, displaying much skill and sonority, particularly in his writing for unaccompanied voices (he was a counter-tenor choral scholar at St John’s, Cambridge).
His indebtedness to his teacher, Howells, is more apparent on this disc than on PFCD282, but there are also passages recalling Britten (Peter Grimes) and Bernstein (Mass, and perhaps the Chichester Psalms), and others.
A Saint Luke Passion, scored intentionally for the same forces (bar a solo baritone, and an extra percussionist) as Britten’s Saint Nicolas, is a particularly impressive and moving achievement that deserves to be taken up at once by any enterprising choral society. His writing for baritone results in an impassioned and quite operatic Christus, who is very much in the foreground of the drama.
There is no separate Evangelist: the chorus act as narrator and participants in the drama, and Downes’ writing for them draws on the drama of Monteverdi and Pärt, the translucence of Palestrina, and the aching expressiveness of Howells. Nonetheless, there is a genuinely original voice here.
The text, chosen by the composer and his wife, divides the work into two. The first half opens with the Last Supper and takes events up to the Crucifixion, ending with an a capella responsory, Tenebrae factae sunt. The second half details the events of the Resurrection, after which the chorus again concludes proceedings, this time with an unaccompanied Credo, which ought to quickly find its way into the repertoire of cathedral and collegiate choirs.
As the composer’s father, Frank Downes, was head of orchestral studies at the Birmingham Conservatoire, it should come as no surprise that the orchestral writing for strings in the Passion is highly competent and assured.
The remaining works on this CD are all for unaccompanied choir, all sacred except for a setting of What shall I do to show how much I love her? The influence of Howells (and indeed Palestrina) is again apparent in Downes’ motet O magnum mysterium, another text from the Tenebrae responses.
It was written before his time at Cambridge (and performed at Wigmore Hall, with the composer singing); a Mass was added to it during his early lessons with Howells at the RCM (1973). The latest work is a Te Deum from 2017.
As with its companion CD, the choral singing is luminous, and all performers are committed and persuasive. Interest in Downes’ music is growing apace, and this issue deserves much success.
Review by Andrew Plant