What’s on Great Sacred Music, Sunday, August 18, 2013

Rob Kennedy
Great Sacred Music
The Classical Station
http://theclassicalstation.org

 

08:00:39
Libby Larsen: Veni, Creator Spiritus
Douglas Cleveland, organ
Goulding & Wood organ, Saint Meinrad Archabbey, St Meinrad, Indiana

 

Thomas Weelkes: Hosanna to the Son of David
Choir of Truro Cathedral, David Briggs

 

Jules Van Nuffel: Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me
Choir of St. Rombaux Cathedral, Malines, Belgium
Johan van Bouwelen

 

Libby Larsen (1950-) is a Grammy Award winning composer. Thomas

Weelkes (1576–1623) was organist of Chichester Cathedral. Jules Van

Nuffel (1883-1953) was a musicologist and cantor of St. Rumbold’s Cathedral

where he collaborated with Flor Peeters.

 

08:15:20
Healey Willan: Chorale Prelude on a Melody by Orlando Gibbons
Patrick Wedd, organ
Casavant Organ (1914, 1995) of the Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Montreal

 

Henry Balfour Gardiner: Evening Hymn
Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, Richard Marlow

 

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Prayer to the Father of Heaven
Elora Festival Singers, Noel Edison

 

The French-Canadian organ building firm Casavant Freres was founded in 1879.

Evening Hymn written in 1908 is Henry Balfour Gardiner’s (1877–1950) best known

composition. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Prayer to the Father of Heaven dates from 1948.

 

08:30:56
Gerre Hancock: Improvisation on the hymn tune “St. Denio”
Gerre Hancock, organ
Adams Organ of St. Thomas’ Church, Fifth Avenue, New York

 

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford: Nunc Dimittis in A, Op. 12
Worcester Cathedral Choir, Donald Hunt
Paul Trepte, organ

 

Sir William Walton: Jubilate Deo
Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, Christopher Robinson
Christopher Whitton, organ

 

Dr. Gerre Hancock (1934-2012) studied improvisation with Nadia Boulanger.

Stanford left us seven settings of the Evening Canticles of which this Nunc Dimittis

or Song of Simeon in A major is one. The Jubilate Deo is a canticle from the Anglican

morning service of Matins. It takes its text from Psalm 100.

 

08:46:52
J.S. Bach: Trio on Herr Jesu Christ dich zu uns wend, BWV 655
Hans Fagius, organ
The reconstructed Baroque organ in Kristine Church, Falun, Sweden

 

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Antiphon ~ Five Mystical Songs
Corydon Singers w/the English Chamber Orchestra, Matthew Best

 

John Rutter: Be Thou my vision
Atlanta Sacred Chorale, Eric Nelson

 

A Trio in organist’s vocabulary is a composition for 2 manuals (keyboards)

and pedal. Vaughan Williams sets George Herbert’s text “Let all the world in ev’ry

corner sing: My God and King” with great energy and excitement. The Atlanta Sacred

Chorale is now called the Atlanta Master Chorale.

 

08:59:50
J.S. Bach: Cantata 35, “Geist und Seele wird verwirret”
Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki
Robin Blaze, alto

 

Cantata 35 opens with one of the most energetic sinfonias Bach ever wrote.

The German can be translated as “Spirit and soul become confused.”

 

09:27:36
Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
The Camerata Singers, Abraham Kaplan, director; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein
John Bogart, alto

 

John Birch commissioned Bernstein to write the Chichester Psalms for 1965

Southern Cathedrals Festival held at Chichester Cathedral.

 

09:47:49
Johannes Brahms: A German Requiem, Op 45
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, James Levine
Kathleen Battle, soprano; Hakan Hagegard, baritone

 

Brahms wrote his Requiem between 1865 and 1868. It is his longest

composition running some 70 minutes.