The season when the Cambridge college choirs step into the limelight is hard upon us. This year’s news is that a major break with tradition is on the way: a couple of months ago St John’s College announced that its all-male choir will admit girls and women from 2022.
A debate has been raging on whether college and cathedral choirs should stay with only boys’ treble voices on the top line, but gender equality is now winning out. This disc is presumably one of the last on which the choir will be heard in the form it has had since it was founded in the 1670s.
As it happens, the disc starts out with boys’ voices alone. Taking the idea of organic growth, the programme develops from a single treble line, then adding organ, lower voices, a second choir, 150 further singers and finally combining nearly 500 voices.
From Hildegard von Bingen’s simple plainchant O pastor animarum to the communal hymn Love Divine, all loves excelling is a big climb in scale. The trebles make a splendid impact in Jonathan Harvey’s The Tree, a piece glinting with light, and the journey takes in Elgar’s grand The Spirit of the Lord, James Long’s contemporary sicut aquilae and a further blast of the trebles at full stretch in Stanford’s A Song of Wisdom.
The mostly live recordings date from 2011 to 2019 and show the consistent quality under three music directors — Christopher Robinson, David Hill and the present Andrew Nethsingha — as St John’s looks forward to a new future.
★★★☆☆
‘The Tree’ is released by Signum Classics
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