A choral surprise...

[Guest]

The only version I could find. Glorious piece. Really well performed by ULCC. Everyone will love it. You know I don't jest about things like this. Trust me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BNHB9ruIFw

[DracoM]

Piece well known of course, performance pretty electrifying.
Shame about the coughing obligato.
Looks like quite an album.

[terratogen]

Electrifying piece truly well performed. Thanks, Simon.

Perhaps worth mentioning that this same piece opens York Minster's recent recording A Year at York--which is where I first encountered it--and is splendidly and boldly sung there as well.

[Simon]

Glad you appreciated it. I was happy to find it too. I'll have a look for the York CD - I'm expecting to be up near there in December for a day or two.

[Dave2002]

Piece well known of course, performance pretty electrifying.
Shame about the coughing obligato.
Looks like quite an album.

Well known? To some, maybe - but not previously to me.

Seems hard to get a version with the "zip" of the featured one, but without the obbligato part. This one is the best I've found so far - http://static.rhap.com/img/170x170/2...42_170x170.jpg Vasari Singers, Jeremy Backhouse on Naxos [just checking it out on Napster].

I never thought I'd be positively looking out for this kind of music - this is good.

PS: Further searches - e.g search for "Vox dicentis: clama" suggest that Stephen Cleobury's King's College Cambridge version has a lot going for it. The single track can be downloaded from either Amazon (MP3) or iTunes (aac?) for under a £1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Anth...1838695&sr=1-4

[terratogen]

I like your search for "zip," Dave. To add just a few more that gave me a "zip" fix:

There's the one from York I mentioned previously, which really is tremendous but can't be downloaded as a single track or as part of an album, as Regent Records don't seem to be on board quite yet with digital downloads. (Hint, nudge. Regent?)

Winchester, too, have a cracking recording of it on Advent in Winchester (iTunes, Amazon; streaming on Spotify). St John's and St Paul's recordings, from the clips available on Hyperion's site, also seem to have the oomph of the York and Winchester recordings—which seemed to be not quite there in some other recordings of the piece—but I haven't heard but the ~40 second sample clips.

All of this is timely, in a way: Halloween's over; certainly it must be Advent by now?

[DracoM]

Another choral surprise: Richard Harvey's 'Plague and the Moonflower'
Can anyone help me on this?

[rauschwerk]

Sorry to be a grouch, but I sang this a good few years ago (admittedly under an uninspiring director) and found it episodic and unmemorable. This recording fails to change my mind.

[Simon]

No worries, rausch. We can't all like the same things. It's certainly episodic all right! But aren't a lot of these anthems?

[Simon]

Another choral surprise: Richard Harvey's 'Plague and the Moonflower'
Can anyone help me on this?

What sort of help, Draco? You got it as an Ohrwurm?

I'm afraid I've never heard of it, but would be interested to listen to a version if you could oblige.

[DracoM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22_BTvapiCI

And it goes on in fragments on Youtube.

[Simon]

Wow. Thanks. Where did you find that? Powerful stuff and superbly done, the bit I've looked at. Something I think we will chill to by the fire one evening...