ROBERT CHILCOTT

"Bob Chilcott’s music is audience-friendly; no one is better at writing tuneful, rhythmic, fun music, but nevertheless it has a transient air. This cannot be said of his settings of sacred texts. Impressive is the beautiful Great O Antiphons (Salisbury Rite), Pange lingua and The Last Invocation. And Every Stone Shall Cry is a minor masterpiece and his setting of the secular text Simple Pictures of Tomorrow is evocative and haunting. The BBC Singers give their usual polished performance."     ***

Shirley Ratcliffe    
 

" ... you get a sense of the settings having grown organically out of their texts, so attuned is Chilcott to words and their import ... As for the singing, it is superb throughout, the BBC Singers, no doubt spurred on Chilcott’s conducting, giving themselves entirely over to both words and music without for a moment allowing any technical lapses ... The booklet notes and sound recording are both of the same excellence..."

Robert Levett 
 

"...All the music on this CD is accessible, concise and says something worthwhile... The choir is renowned as an expert ensemble and here they sing splendidly under Chilcott’s direction... In the case of Beach, Chilcott employs a viola, superbly played by Paul Silverthorne. The viola’s nutty brown sound adds a marvellously wistful touch to this piece... The selection of music on this disc has been well made to give a good variety of perspectives on Bob Chilcott’s choral output... Chilcott is a resourceful composer and one who writes exceptionally well for voices and he is superbly served here by the virtuosity of the BBC Singers..."

John Quinn   
 

" ... the sheer vitality of this music exudes genuine joyfulness ... all the artistic and technical demands of this varied programme are deftly handled by the wonderfully versatile BBC Singers ... With Signum’s suitably spacious recorded sound, this is a glorious showcase of one of the finest choral composers at work in Britain today"  

Marc Rochester