Rubbra: Choral Works Stephen Varcoe, City Of London Sinfonia, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chorus & Richard Hickox

• Edmund Rubbra (1901 - 1986): Song of the Soul (in intimate communication and union with the love of God), Op. 78:
• 1 Rubbra: Song of the Soul (in intimate communication and union with the love of God), Op. 78 08:48
• 4 Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Op. 32:
• 2 Rubbra: 4 Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Op. 32: I. Rondel. Allegro vivace e sempre leggiero 02:26
• 3 Rubbra: 4 Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Op. 32: II. Plaint. Lento 03:07
• 4 Rubbra: 4 Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Op. 32: III. Pastoral. Giocoso 01:23
• 5 Rubbra: 4 Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Op. 32: V. Lament. Lento 05:17
• Inscape, Op. 122:
• 6 Rubbra: Inscape, Op. 122: I. Pied Beauty 02:55
• 7 Rubbra: Inscape, Op. 122: II. The Lantern out of Doors 06:20
• 8 Rubbra: Inscape, Op. 122: III. Spring 03:14
• 9 Rubbra: Inscape, Op. 122: IV. God's Grandeur 03:49
• 10 Rubbra: Inscape, Op. 122: V. Epilogue 00:39
• Veni, creator Spiritus, Op. 130:
• 11 Rubbra: Veni, creator Spiritus, Op. 130 07:15
• Advent Cantata. Natum Maria Virgine, Op. 136:
• 12 Rubbra: Advent Cantata. Natum Maria Virgine, Op. 136: I. Recitative 02:48
• 13 Rubbra: Advent Cantata. Natum Maria Virgine, Op. 136: II. Aria 01:57
• 14 Rubbra: Advent Cantata. Natum Maria Virgine, Op. 136: III. Acrostic Hymn 03:16
• 15 Rubbra: Advent Cantata. Natum Maria Virgine, Op. 136: IV. Chorale 03:01
• Total Runtime 56:15

Info for Rubbra: Choral Works

Throughout his long composing career, Edmund Rubbra (1901–1986) had always been concerned with writing for voice. Indeed, his earliest acknowledged pieces were all vocal. His exquisite Christmas carol Dormi Jesu written for the Oxford Book of Christmas Carols in 1922 pointed the way to a whole series of wonderful works for choir which extends to his last composition, an unassuming setting of Psalm 122 (1984). Most of these choral works are unaccompanied and include five settings of the Mass, plus many motets and anthems. However, there is also a series of short cantata-like pieces, three of which are included on this album.

Rubbra’s own deep interest in religious and philosophical ideas, together with his knowledge and understanding of both Renaissance and Eastern music, gave all his work a spiritual dimension which is most individual. In selecting texts, Rubbra was thus particularly attracted to those within the mystical tradition, whether it be the metaphysical John Donne or Henry Vaughan, the Victorian Hopkins or the great Spanish mystic, St John of the Cross. All these writers have a strong sense of the spiritual expressed through the sensual, and this is reflected in Rubbra’s own sound world which is at once restrained yet deeply passionate.

For the earliest work on this disc, however, the Four Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Rubbra chose secular Latin texts from the Carmina Burana manuscript and from the poetry of Peter Abelard (1079 –1142). These were originally set for chorus and the last two given their first performance in this guise as part of a BBC contemporary music concert in 1934 (in a programme, incidentally, shared with the first performance of Britten’s A Boy Was Born). The pieces were found to be too difficult in this medium, however, and were reworked after the war as settings for baritone and string orchestra. In this form they had their first performance on 11 March 1947 at the Wigmore Hall with Robert Irwin as the soloist.

In these songs the vocal line subtly expresses both the playful and ardent nature of the texts, whilst the string orchestra does not just accompany but comments on the nature of the words. For example, as Ralph Grover points out in his book on Rubbra, there is a strong contrast between the stark vocal line and the highly chromatic accompaniment in the Abelard setting, ‘Planctus’ (‘Lament’).

Stephen Varcoe, baritone
Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chorus
Joseph Cullen, chorus director
City of London Sinfonia
Richard Hickox, conductor

Stephen Varcoe
has established a reputation as one of Britain’s most versatile baritones. He has made over 125 recordings including works by Hahn, Chabrier, Finzi, Gurney, Stanford, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Schubert, Nigel Osborne and Thea Musgrave and John Tavener, and has joined Richard Hickox for numerous releases of Haydn, Beethoven, Vaughan-Williams, Grainger and Britten on Chandos. On the concert platform, Stephen has appeared with orchestras in the UK, Scandinavia, Europe, Japan and North America, working with conductors including Brüggen, Christie, Herreweghe, Knussen, Leonhardt, Norrington, Rifkin, Kuijken, Marriner and Malgoire. He has regularly taken part in the BBC Proms and festivals throughout the world and appears in recital with Roger Vignoles, Graham Johnson, Julius Drake and Ian Burnside. Stephen Varcoe’s opera engagements have taken him to Antwerp, Lisbon, Drottningholm (Stockholm) and Tokyo where he has appeared in works by Monteverdi, Haydn, Debussy, Holst, Britten and Taverner.

Richard Hickox
At the time of his untimely death at the age of sixty in November 2008, Richard Hickox CBE, one of the most gifted and versatile British conductors of his generation, was Music Director of Opera Australia, having served as Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales from 2000 until 2006 when he became Conductor Emeritus. He founded the City of London Sinfonia, of which he was Music Director, in 1971. He was also Associate Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Emeritus of the Northern Sinfonia, and co-founder of Collegium Musicum 90.

He regularly conducted the major orchestras in the UK and appeared many times at the BBC Proms and at the Aldeburgh, Bath, and Cheltenham festivals, among others. With the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre he conducted a number of semi-staged operas, including Billy Budd, Hänsel und Gretel, and Salome. With the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra he gave the first ever complete cycle of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies in London. In the course of an ongoing relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra he conducted Elgar, Walton, and Britten festivals at the South Bank and a semi-staged performance of Gloriana at the Aldeburgh Festival.

Apart from his activities at the Sydney Opera House, he enjoyed recent engagements with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, English National Opera, Vienna State Opera, and Washington Opera, among others. He guest conducted such world-renowned orchestras as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic.

His phenomenal success in the recording studio resulted in more than 280 recordings, including most recently cycles of orchestral works by Sir Lennox and Michael Berkeley and Frank Bridge with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the symphonies by Vaughan Williams with the London Symphony Orchestra, and a series of operas by Britten with the City of London Sinfonia. He received a Grammy (for Peter Grimes) and five Gramophone Awards. Richard Hickox was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Honours List in 2002, and was the recipient of many other awards, including two Music Awards of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first ever Sir Charles Groves Award, the Evening Standard Opera Award, and the Award of the Association of British Orchestras.

This album contains no booklet.