Choral Evening Prayer September 5th 2012

[bach736]

http://www.winchestercollege.org/chapel-choir-video

[DracoM]

http://www.bramdeanschool.co.uk/chapel_choir.html

Reports as 'not found', arcarp?

[Miles Coverdale]

You'll need to add an 'l' - the file is .html, not .htm

[DracoM]

IthangU.

It's the acoustic as much as anything else. But they do sing with great confident purity of tone. That said, that Goodall Ps 23 was not intended to be testing material. I note that the choir is now mixed. Back in the ancient days, of course, it was boys only IIRC.

[ardcarp]

The choir is very different nowadays. It used to sing daily services in its vast chapel..some Anglcan some RC, some with men but most boys only. I am probably going back 10 - 15 years, so all I know now is via that website...but it's obviously still going, which is surely a good thing.

[ardcarp]

...and missing 'l' just added. Sorry.

[Finzi4ever]

Well, it will be very interesting to hear what Malcolm Archer has achieved there.

http://www.winchestercollege.org/chapel

'A good deal' is the answer to that. I was a great admirer of his two (very different from MA and each other!) predecessors as well, however (Julian Smith & the redoubtable "The Dr" Chris Tolley.

[Keraulophone]

When a friend was DoM at Bramdean around ten years ago (or was it slightly further back?), the boys sang CE nearly every day. The reason he felt he couldn't stay longer than a year was that, in his opinion, the headmaster, who also owned the school, was too eccentric to work for. I'm sure it's an entirely different place today.

It seems that a certain Dr Barry Rose is active in training the current Bramdean choir, and he writes glowingly about them in the school newsletter: http://www.bramdeanschool.co.uk/Imag...utumn_2011.pdf

With regard to Winchester Coll Ch, I have always regarded it's CE broadcasts going back some years, as some of the most memorable and most 'sincere' of all (ie not a hint of over-egging/over-egoing). That film of the choir's activities (link in a post above) is surely a model of its kind.

[DracoM]

Well..........24 messages in, it's time for me to remind all that actually TODAY is the recorded Choral Prayer from Neresheim! @ 3.30 p.m.

Was that HM just a bit more than 'eccentric'? Or is my memory playing me false?

[Keraulophone]

Yes - to answer your first question.

[DracoM]

Yes - to answer your first question.

Hmm.

[DracoM]

A quiet, dignified, thoughtful and finely sung service. Expert, restrained blending from a good choir, and well-judged tempi in much of the material.

Ironically, the Wood and Stanford were for me the least successful items there, not in terms of performance, but in style and content set against the rest of the service. I don't think I've ever heard that Stanford anthem before, and to be honest, not sure I'd be all that unhappy if I didn't hear it again - came across as a trifle stop-start and formless.

Excellent voluntary played with real sense of fun and panache.

[ardcarp]

The organ sounded like a real cracker...especially in the final hymn. Yes, the voluntary was fun but perhaps not the most profound piece of writing for the instrument!

[Pegasus]

The majority of this service left me cold. The singing was largely accurate and professional, and the voices generally well-controlled, but I felt the performance lacked a sense of connection with style or occasion. It did not convince of the love of worship in the way that last week's service from Armagh did. The plainsong I thought mechanical, and I was not always certain that phrases (homophonic or polyphonic) were sustained right the way to their natural conclusion.

The Bevan Magnificat is a favourite of mine and a fine piece - hearing it was, for me, the highlight of the afternoon. Like DracoM, I would not be unhappy if I never heard the Stanford again.

Finally, profound or not, the playing of the Balbastre was certainly stylish and assured.