Hertfordshire Chorus
London Mozart Players
David Temple conductor
SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD1005
On receiving this disc, I was first struck by the very potent image used on the cover. It shows what is clearly a prison cell with a high barred window which admits a grey, shadowy light. It recalled Oscar Wilde’s poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which contains the lines describing Wilde’s view of another prisoner,
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye,
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
De Profundis is also the title of Wilde’s long, introspective and often hostile letter that he addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. The effect of the combination of these elements is to place the listener in a receptive frame of mind for what many have regarded as Parry’s finest choral work.
One reason for its neglect is the demands it makes on the forces required to perform it. The chorus is in twelve parts, sometimes divided into three four-part choirs, at others two six-part groups, but it is clear that a very large group of voices is necessary, to say nothing of the solo soprano, organ and orchestra.
Parry’s setting of the deeply penitential Psalm 130 from the Vulgate dates from 1891 and was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival at Hereford. What is immediately apparent on listening to the work is the distance the composer had travelled since his first major choral work Prometheus Unbound of 1880, where some of the choral writing is, in places, somewhat perfunctory, to the virtuosity of his handling of the choral forces in this work. The treatment of the key relationships is equally assured, showing the composer to be significantly ahead of many of his contemporaries.
This performance by the Hertfordshire Chorus and London Mozart Players is outstanding with a lyrical contribution from the soprano Sophie Bevan, under the direction of the vastly experienced David Temple.
The large-scale anthem God is Our Hope and Strength is an excellent companion piece with a distinguished contribution from the solo baritone Dominic Sedgwick. It too is conceived on a grand scale and, like Blest Pair of Sirens, is scored for double choir, but would be more amenable to a smaller scale performance than De Profundis.
The part songs From the Bavarian Highlands might seem a somewhat stark contrast with Parry’s expressions of serious purpose, but the juxtaposition works very well. These performances provide a most persuasive case for two of Parry’s finest choral works and can be recommended without reservation.
Review by Martyn Strachan