Tippett: Dance, Clarion Air

“Scarcely time to draw breath but the BBC Singers offer a winning Tippett set.” Gramophone Magazine

“Tippett's relationship with the BBC Singers went back almost to the beginning of his career, and he often expressed intense admiration of them. His faith is rewarded here. I don’t think I've ever heard things like the tortuous chromatic writing at the heart of The Weeping Babe come across with such conviction.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2007 *****

“Tippett's choral music makes for a heterogeneous collection on disc: just the sort of programme you would never expect to encounter at a live concert. Signum Classics underlines the heterogeneity by cramming the 19 items together with only a few brief seconds between them. This makes for several jarring shifts of tonality, and seems especially careless since the disc plays for under 63 minutes anyway. Constant use of the pause button is the only solution.
Fortunately, the performances compensate.
The polish and professionalism of the BBC Singers are everywhere apparent, and they bring an imposing tonal weight to such familiar items as the Spirituals from 'A Child of Our Time'. This is a fine account, aided by the lively acoustic of the Temple Church: for once one hardly misses the orchestra in 'Go down, Moses'. For the same reason the absence of boys' voices in the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis for St John's College, Cambridge, and of a plangent solo countertenor in Lullaby, for the Deller Consort, are less troubling than they might otherwise be.
Stephen Cleobury and the BBC Singers are especially impressive in the weaving lines and dancing rhythms of the madrigals and motets from the 1940s. Even they can do little to clarify the congested textures of the Songs from the BritishIsles, but there are two previously unrecorded items: an arrangement of 'Over the Sea to Skye' weaves the familiar tune in some appealingly offbeat counterpoints, and a hymn-tune written by the atheist Tippett for the Salvation Army proves to be touchingly sincere.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The Finzi Singers are eloquent in the Spirituals, and polished in the British Songs (especially the beguiling 'Early One Morning'). However, it's especially good to have the works which represent early sightings of Tippett's later, less lusciously lyrical style – the Lullaby (with countertenor, reminding us that it was written for the Deller Consort) and the Magnificat and Nuncdimittis: here not only are the intonation and phrasing of the tricky lines supremely confident, but the accompanying organ is recorded with exemplary naturalness. The vocal sound throughout is generally no less successful. There may be almost too full and rich a texture for the linear intricacies of Plebs angelica and The WeepingBabe to make their maximum effect, but there's no lack of exuberance in Dance, ClarionAir and the other secular pieces.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“[Nimbus'] commitment to preserving the composer's own readings of his music during his lifetime was noble, assiduous and beyond reproach ... The achievement, as revealed on this four-CD collection, a panoramic view of his output lasting in all nearly four and a half hours, is such as to renew our sense of Tippett's greatness and his lasting historical presence, and the sheer glory of his music.” BBC Music Magazine