Meditation

Meditation

Meditation
Director of Music: 
David Hill
Organ Scholar: 
Jonathan Vaughn
Release date: 
July 2004
Featuring: 
  • Theo Bamber (Solo)
  • Quintin Beer (Solo)
  • Benjamin Durrant (Solo)
  • Joseph Gardom (Solo - Trebles)
  • Lester Lardenoye (Solo - Alto)
  • Allan Clayton (Solo - Tenor)
  • George Humphreys (Solo - Bass)
Record label: 
SJCR
Catalogue number: 
SJCR103-2

Meditation celebrates the completion of David Hill's first year at St John's, and is a highly personal choice of music for Advent, Lent and Passiontide. It is an extraordinarily diverse sequence of pieces, which show the emotional and musical range of the Choir. Allegri's Miserere and Lotti's Crucifixus are deeply loved masterpieces and there are works by composers ranging from Arvo Part to Thomas Tallis as well as Jonathan Harvey's fine new work, which was commissioned for the Choir in 2004. Philip Moore's settings of the three Prayers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are especially moving and fine solos from treble Quintin Beer.

Producer: John Rutter

Track list

  1. Miserere mei, Deus, Allegri
  2. Ne irascaris, Byrd
  3. O vos omnes, Casals
  4. The Beatitudes, Part
  5. The royal banners forward go, Harvey
  6. Crucifixus, Lotti
  7. O salutaris hostia, Tallis
  8. Crux fidelis, John IV, King of Portugal
  9. Nunc dimittis, Holst
  10. O salutaris hostia, Rossini

More about this release

The Elizabethan motets are sung with evident love for the rise and fall of their long-breathed phrases. Jonathan Harvey's new work is handled imaginatively and owes much to the excellence of its treble soloist, Benjamin Durrant. The prayers of Pastor Bonhoeffer set by Philip Moore, though not new to the catalogue, are newly, and deeply, moving.

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Recorded on
9 March 2024

 

A Meditation on the Passion of Christ is a service of music and readings reflecting on the Passion of Christ. This year the service features music by Byrd, Purcell, Weelkes and MacMillan, as well as the final piece of a triptych of works written for the choir by Joanna Marsh.

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Winner of the 2008 Ivor Novello Award for classical music, Jonathan Dove CBE has composed a broad range of works and is one of the most successful British composers today. 

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