Recordings
“Budding singers, composers, conductors and producers everywhere take note: this is how it’s done.” Classic FM Magazine
The Road to Paradise
Britten: A Hymn to the Virgin
Byrd: Christe, qui lux es
Harris: Bring us, O Lord God
Holst: Nunc Dimittis
Howells: Take him, earth for cherishing
Parsons: Ave maria – motet
Bennett: A Good-Night
Sheppard: Media vita | In pace in idipsum
Tallis: Miserere nostri
Tavener: Song for Athene
Gabrieli Consort
Paul McCreesh (conductor)
A thrilling and compelling collection drawn from the two great ages of English choral tradition: the Renaissance and the 20th century. Featuring masterpieces from Thomas Tallis to John Taverner, Paul McCreesh and the Gabrielis aim to recreate the soul’s journey from earthly tribulation to heavenly joys.
Excerpt: Britten “A Hymn to the Virgin”
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“It’s a beautifully realised sequence, framed by plainchant and a tolling bell, which begins with Tallis’s tiny motet Miserere Nostri Domine, and ends with Herbert Howells’ Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing. The most substantial work is John Sheppard’s elaborate six-voice Media Vita in Morte Sumus, wonderfully sung by the mixed voices of the Gabrieli Consort. Every performance is beautifully conceived and recorded in an acoustic that gives enough churchy resonance without obscuring the detail.”Guardian
“Exquisitely sung, they amount to a solemn, very English response to life’s transience and the permanence of death.”Observer
“McCreesh turns an artistic thread binding the two golden ages of English choral music – Tudor and 20th-century – into a pilgrimage of the soul, from life to death to immortality in paradise…There are riches here, superbly sung by the Gabrielis.”Sunday Times
Deutsche Grammophon
GH 477 6605
June 2007