If you’re a choral music fan and you somehow managed to miss this classic the first time around, well now’s your chance to grab it–and you must–in its newly reissued version, now at mid-price. The program’s opening track–Stanford’s exquisite impressionistic masterpiece, The Blue Bird–alone is worth any price, and from there the program never falters, in musical quality or choral artistry. If there are other highlights, they might be the Vaughan Williams Shakespeare Songs, Elgar’s My love dwelt in a Northern land, or the difficult and powerfully expressive Five Flower Songs of Benjamin Britten. And then there’s the wonderful little encore piece, Stanford’s setting of the Irish air Quick! we have but a second, which actually is 41 seconds of virtuoso vocal ensemble magic. John Rutter and his Cambridge Singers made many memorable, and in many cases inimitable recordings–and this is one that belongs in every collection, a bright and beautiful celebration of some of the world’s finest choral music, sung the way it should be sung. [12/14/2002]
