Morning Star

Program: #23-52   Air Date: Dec 25, 2023

I. & II. Morning Star (The Gesualdo Six/Owain Park) Hyperion CD CDA 68404.

Step into an enchanting sequence of festive works for the season of Epiphany. Amidst the cold and frosty nights, composers capture a sense of anticipation at what the new year may bring. This album weaves together beloved seasonal carols spanning across centuries and bringing warmth to the winter’s embrace.

Traditionally in the UK, the days preceding Twelfth Night have an air of post-Christmas lull. It’s a sleepy time, as we look expectantly to the promise of a new year. Days are cold and short, glistening with frost and punctuated by long, dark nights.

But then there is ‘Little Christmas’—Epiphany, which comes from the Greek ‘epiphaneia’, meaning ‘appearance’, and which is one of the three principal and oldest festival days of the Christian Church. The revelation of Jesus Christ to the world, the visit of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus and the wedding at Cana are all celebrated at this time. Following an old tradition, those who forget to take down their Christmas trees on Epiphany eve must leave them untouched until Candlemas: it is this period which forms the musical timeline for much of this album.

There is no shortage of wonderful repertoire to explore at this time of year. Full of hope and joy, much of it alluding to the ‘morning star’, it offers a promise of renewal and rebirth. These works remind us to celebrate the gifts we have received, and to wonder at the mystical alchemy described in the Epiphany story. On this album we weave a tapestry of well-known seasonal carols together with Renaissance gems and highlights from the twenty-first century. We hope that the music contained here reflects the joy we had performing it, as we return to the chapel at Trinity College in Cambridge, where we made our first festive album a few years ago. Owain Park © 2023

From BBC Classical Music:

Owain Park has threaded these pieces together with balance and ingenuity by inserting between the polyphonic works five plainsongs taken from the Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany. Chant performances on recordings tend to be somewhat perfunctory and dull, but here each item is performed with marvelous attention to both phrasing, style and message. The strong Introit reflects the coming of the ‘mighty Lord’, the Gradual sparkles with luminous joy at the gifts, the Alleluia evokes praises from the Three Kings, the darkly glittering Offertory offers up its cascading runs like clouds of incense, and the downwardly transposed Communion states simply and quietly the purpose of the visit of the wise men. The singers are at their brilliant best in pieces that demand gentle, embracing harmonic blending – for example in Johannes Eccard’s ‘Maria wallt zum Helligtum’, in Howells’s ‘Here is the little door,’ and in ‘Mirabile Mysterium’ where the Slovenian composer Handl serves up exotic shifts of chromatic colouring. Oddly the early pieces by Byrd, Lassus and Manchicourt attract neat but slightly matter-of-fact performances. This can be a danger for groups performing such repertoire. Early music does not often provide obvious, goal directed harmonic structures, or patterns of intensity governed by vivid word setting or expressive changes of texture. Nor does it usually display obvious signposts in the shaping of forms that would support our modern preference for ‘structural listening’. Consequently some quite famous modern choral groups (no names) often produce a haphazard wash of pleasing sounds full of effects without discernible causes. Not so the Gesualdo Six: in a work such as ‘Magi Veniunt’ by Clemens non Papa they demonstrate ingeniously and effectively how to evoke a sense of direction and climax by judicious dynamic shading, varied phrasing, alert patterns of intensity and a growing sense of profundity. Other qualities can be heard in the haunting atmosphere of Joanna Marsh’s ‘In Winter’s House’, and the enticing patterns of utterance in Park’s ‘O Send Out Thy Light’. There are many engrossing and lovely musical experiences here. 

Anthony Pryer

III. Joyaux Médiévaux (Ensemble Anonymous). Analekta CD AN 2 9780.

Canadian ensemble Anonymous has collected a variety of French, Italian, and Spanish pieces from the medieval and early Renaissance periods and organized them seasonally. Each month is represented by one or more pieces, secular or sacred, instrumental or vocal, that are thematically related to the season. For the most part, the CD avoids the most familiar representatives of this repertoire that tend to show up on compilations like this one, and offers a diverting miscellany that includes chansons, several varieties of estampies, saltarellos, and liturgical song. 

Ensemble Anonymous sings and plays the pieces with energy and obvious enjoyment, but also with restraint and a concern for correctness that keeps the music from really soaring. Particularly in its attention to rhythmic regularity and precision, it fails to take into account the rambunctious social settings in which much of the secular music would have been originally played. The most effective performances of secular music from these periods are those that are animated by unselfconscious abandon, and this CD lacks that spark. Taken on its own terms, though, as an accurate and pure-toned account of the music, it succeeds and is welcome for the mostly unfamiliar repertoire that it brings to light.

Composer Info

Peter Cornelius, Johannes Eccard, William Byrd, Joanna Marsh, Jacob Handl, Herbert Howells, C. non Papa, Arvo Pärt, Adrian Peacock, Lassus, Judith Bingham, Manchicourt, Adam de la Halle, Colin Muset,

CD Info

Hyperion CD CDA 68404, Analekta CD AN 2 9780