Alban Voices & Robin White: American Choral Classics
Divine Art

Many things recommend this collection of American choral works performed by the UK-based chamber choir Alban Voices under conductor Robin White's direction. Diversity, for one, as the set ranges from stirring meditations by Samuel Barber, Randall Thompson, and Eric Whitacre to choral renditions of “Shenandoah,” Gershwin's “Summertime,” and Copland's irreverent “I bought me a cat.” And concision, secondly, as the wide-ranging recording weighs in at a smartly considered forty-six minutes. That it includes a treatment of Copland's In the Beginning as its centrepiece also argues powerfully on the project's behalf, as does the participation of mezzo-soprano Barbara Naylor, who's sung in The Cunning Little Vixen, The Rake's Progress, and others, and pianist Peter Jaekel.

The choir itself was formed more than two decades ago by White and his late wife, Freda, and was originally created as a relief choir for services in St. Albans Abbey, hence the ensemble name. On this recording, Alban Voices, whose members regularly appear in some of London's most esteemed symphonic choirs, comprises nine sopranos, ten altos, nine tenors, and eight basses, with soprano Julia Blinko featured as a soloist in Barber's Agnus Dei and Whitacre's Lux Aurumque.

A solemn tone is established at the outset by Alleluia, which, written by Thompson (1899-1984) in 1940, has become the composer's best-known and most performed work. Hushed voices cast an immediate spell as they intone the titular word repeatedly and weave it into a delicate, polyphonic statement of soaring majesty. Its elegiac character is perpetuated by the subsequent settings, Agnus Dei and Lux Aurumque by Barber (1910-81) and Whitacre (b. 1970), respectively. The former is the composer's own transcription for voices of his beloved Adagio for Strings and is as riveting in Alban Voices' treatment as in its instrumental form. A natural complement to it is Lux Aurumque, a haunting expression Whitacre first shared with listeners via a ‘Virtual choir' internet presentation. Barber returns on the recording with “Sure on this Shining Night,” a breathtaking exercise in uplift that's elevated all the more by Jaekel's graceful presence.

Whereas Barber's represented by two pieces, Copland (1900-90) gets three, beginning with “Simple Gifts,” whose joyous Shaker tune was written by Joseph Brackett, one of the movement's elders, and was later incorporated into Appalachian Spring. At a minute-and-a-half, it acts as something of a prelude to the much more elaborate In the Beginning, which, over the course of sixteen engrossing minutes, couples vivid solo expressions by Naylor with choir singing that ranges between declamatory and susurrant. Intricate in design and contrasting in mood, tempo, and style, Copland's dignified setting of the Biblical Creation allegory is less well-known than Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and Fanfare for the Common Man but is no less deserving of attention. In contrast to the seriousness of In the Beginning is the cheeky crowd-pleaser “I bought me a cat,” a natural encore choice that's sequenced fittingly at album's end.

July 2023