Caritas Chamber Choir: A New Spirit
Ulysses Arts

There's much to recommend the Caritas Chamber Choir's latest recording, the finesse of the singing, for starters, but also a set-list whose choral works are all premiere recordings and were created by Sir James MacMillan, Phillip Cooke, Henrik Dahlgren, and Andrew Smith. Represented by five pieces, MacMillan is the most famous of the four, but the others sound perfectly at home in his company; in no way do their contributions sound secondary to their celebrated colleague. While Dahlgren and Smith call Scandinavia home, Cooke and MacMillan are in Scotland.

Based around the city of Canterbury in Kent, the Caritas Chamber Choir was founded in 2011 by Music Director Benedict Preece and is renowned for commissioning new works and advocating for new church music. Those conversant in Latin will know that Caritas means charity, and consistent with that the choir regularly raises funds for charities, good causes, and churches. The company is, in other words, easy to get behind and admirable in its commitment to helping others. Preece conducts the ensemble, obviously, but he's also an organist and composer, and, after starting out as a Chorister of Canterbury Cathedral, for many years sang as a tenor. His extensive experience and the multiple posts he's held make him a natural fit for the role of Music Director, and certainly his vocal background helps too in sensitively shaping the group's sound and maximizing the splendour of its vocal textures. The choir itself is comprised of professional and advanced non-professional singers drawn from the East Kent area and on A New Spirit features twenty-three singers: seven sopranos, six altos, four tenors, and six basses. While the album's distinguished by ensemble singing, solo turns by soprano Millie Heyward enhance significantly the impact of two settings.

The fifty-four-minute release opens auspiciously with Cooke's soaring Christus resurgens, its Easter text taken from Romans, 6:9, verses 9-10. The high-volume intensity with which it begins doesn't continue throughout, however: contrast arises when the resounding “Christus” declamations are countered by introspective passages until a repeated “Alleluiah” brings the work to a powerful end. Gentler by comparison is Three Latin Hymns, Dahlgren's setting of three Marian hymns. They're magnificent expressions that, similar to Christus resurgens, benefit from spellbinding shifts in dynamics. By way of illustration, the third in the series, “Ave Maria,” builds from a subdued lyrical passage to an emphatic climax before returning to the gentle state from which it began.

MacMillian's If ye love me, commissioned in 2013 for the retirement of the South African bishop Desmond Tutu, is a quietly rapturous work that speaks to the composer's abundant gifts. Composed in 2020 for Cambridge's St Bene't's Church to celebrate its Millennium, For a thousand years captures MacMillian's talent for wedding music to content when the words repeat but the harmony changes, the gesture smartly intimating how things change with time but scripture remains the same. His imagination comes into play again during I will take you from the nations when the text from which it's derived, Ezekiel 36: 24-26, includes a water reference (“I will sprinkle clean water upon you”) that prompted MacMillian to have the singers deliver the vocal part in an arresting drip-like form. Composed for St Dominic's Sixth Form College, Harrow-on-the-Hill, in 2022, Be who God meant you to be is clear in its message to the students, but what you'll likely remember most about Caritas's sublime rendition is the tender ache of Heyward's obbligato solo. That album highlight's followed by The Highgate Motet, commissioned by Mrs Gina Goldhammer in memory of her husband and a heartfelt expression that swells to a wondrous, awe-inspiring climax.

A work that exploits dynamic extremes, Cooke's Veni Sponsa Christi repeats “Veni” as a direct call to action but is as memorable for its hushed passages as its fortissimo “Alleluiahs.” Its incorporation of dissonance also lends it distinguishing character, as does the stirring obbligato solo Heyward delivers midway through. A supplicating and humble spirit permeates Cooke's O Lord, save thy people, which was written for the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music and is dedicated to the people of Ukraine. An atmospheric work, the material is made even more chilling by the inclusion of humming.

February 2025