CE Gloucester Cathedral Three Choirs Wed, 27th July 2016

[DracoM]

CE Gloucester Cathedral
The Three Choirs Festival


Order of Service:


Introit: The spacious firmament on high (Bernard Rose)
Responses: Rose
Psalms 59, 60 (Clarke, Partington)
First Lesson: Ezekiel 39: 21-29
Office Hymn: Be thou my guardian and my guide (Abridge)
Canticles: The Gloucester Service (Ian King) - first broadcast performance
Second Lesson: Mark 1: 21-28
Anthem: For lo, I raise up (Stanford)
Final Hymn: O God of earth and altar (King's Lynn)


Organ Voluntary: Passacaglia (Bernard Rose)



Organist and Assistant Director of Music: Jonathan Hope
Director of Music: Adrian Partington

[DracoM]

Apologies for late posting. Horrendous thunderstorm wiped out router/hub, left me offline for days, and had to order new one - which arrived within 48 hrs to my amazement.

Seems that Three Choirs is celebrating Bernard Rose?

[DracoM]

Mistaken repeat - broadband VERY slow oop 'ere at the mo.

[Miles Coverdale]

In the interests of pedantry I'd point out that the King is receiving its first broadcast performance (its first performance took place a few weeks ago). The chant is by Kendrick Partington, Adrian's father.

[DracoM]

Many thx. Have amended.

[mopsus]

It's the centenary of Bernard Rose's birth. Actually these two pieces are the only ones by him in the Festival, but there's a couple of pages about him in the programme. I'm singing in the Festival Chorus and hope to attend this service.

[DracoM]

Reminder: today @ 3.30 p.m.

[DracoM]

Ian King canticles welcome additions to the literature. Clever 'big building' music, exploiting space with both solos and textural complexity, a certain theatricality, a real and impressive role for the organist, some hints of Part, Ligeti, but nods nicely to great Three Choirs composers of yesteryear too. I can see these canticles establishing themselves, BUT less experienced choirs might find some divisi lines a bit tricky possibly here and there. I loved the enigmatic end of the Mag - hushed, attenuated, no Amen, and the fuller recap of Amen in the Nunc. Yes, worth more than a second listen.

For once on CE, the front rows took the limelight, and gave it robust stick but were never raucous and were vigilant in watching Mr Partington. A very few ragged bits, interestingly some in a set of responses everyone in those choirs must know with their eyes closed - ahem.....might that have been the problem??

Thx to all.

[DT1]

Great broadcast but the balance was awful. So much detail allowed to simply echo away. Gloucester Cathedral has a neo baroque organ, not that you would know it from this broadcast. Everything sounded so dark. Great pity especially in the King canticles.

[jean]

The Sunday repeat at 2.45 not 3 -so if you didn't notice you've almost missed the psalms!

[DracoM]

Something very weird going on: I posted an NB alerting Forumistas to the 2.45 p.m. start -saved it in my Word files - on the Order of Service page - and it seems not to be there. V.odd. Hmm. Maybe I didn't copy to save to paste that far down the page. Apologies.