Lyrita releases Charles Villiers Stanford, Te Deum and Elegiac Ode (SRCD 435) on 5 July 2024 with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, sopranos Rhian Lois and Samantha Price, tenor Alessandro Fisher and baritone Morgan Pearse, conducted by Adrian Partington.
'By the time Stanford had received a commission from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival to write a choral work for them in 1884, he had, aged 32, already begun to assert himself as one of Britain’s leading composers. The Elegiac Ode was, however, his first mature foray into the world of major British choral festivals. Some of the Elegiac Ode had been sketched three years earlier in 1881, but after the Norwich commission, Stanford grasped the opportunity to complete it in July 1884. The words were taken from the last part of Walt Whitman’s elegy, ‘When lilacs in the door yard bloom’d’, written after President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. (Stanford’s pupil, Gustav Holst, would use the same text for his Ode to Death after the First World War in 1919.) Taking the seven verses of the burial hymn, Stanford divided his chosen text into four parts, creating a four-movement musical structure more akin to a choral symphony with its substantial and thematically related choral outer movements flanking two shorter inner essays.
Stanford’s large-scale setting of the Te Deum Op. 66 was first sung at the Leeds Festival on 6 October 1898: its ambitious, opulent dimensions were a fitting commemoration of the accession to the throne by Queen Victoria (its dedicatee) sixty years earlier, as well as a tribute to the full-bodied, well-trained Leeds chorus of 350 singers. A particular feature of the Te Deum is the grandeur of much of its choral writing. Though also dramatic, a dominating feature of the Te Deum is its prominent use of the chorus, and the many fulsome sonorities Stanford was able to draw from the magnificent ‘instrument’ of the Leeds voices.' © Jeremy Dibble
Stanford’s large-scale setting of the Te Deum Op. 66 was first sung at the Leeds Festival on 6 October 1898: its ambitious, opulent dimensions were a fitting commemoration of the accession to the throne by Queen Victoria (its dedicatee) sixty years earlier, as well as a tribute to the full-bodied, well-trained Leeds chorus of 350 singers. A particular feature of the Te Deum is the grandeur of much of its choral writing. Though also dramatic, a dominating feature of the Te Deum is its prominent use of the chorus, and the many fulsome sonorities Stanford was able to draw from the magnificent ‘instrument’ of the Leeds voices.' © Jeremy Dibble
'The performances on the disc have a sophistication and vigour that does full justice to the music.'
Planet Hugill, 24 July 2024
Planet Hugill, 24 July 2024
SRCD 382: Stanford, Mass 'Via Victrix':
'Rescued from obscurity nearly a century after its composition, Stanford's largescale post-war mass is definitely worth checking out. Impassioned performances here.' BBC Music Magazine
'Rescued from obscurity nearly a century after its composition, Stanford's largescale post-war mass is definitely worth checking out. Impassioned performances here.' BBC Music Magazine
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