Reviewed by Steven Whitehead

This is the first retrospective of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's choral music and is a timely release as it is the composer's 70th birthday in 2006. Bennett has written music for the concert hall, opera, ballet and cinema and his choral work has, perhaps, been obscured by this work in other genres. The Cambridge Singers, under the baton of the industrious John Rutter, do him full justice with some excellent singing, often a cappella. The title song was written for the Donald Hunt Singers in 1983. The texts are Elizabethan and Jacobean (Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marvell) and any choir that attempts this has to be very confident in the singers' abilities. The Cambridge Singers deliver in full. Of particular interest to us are Bennett's religious works. We get his only piece of liturgical music, a beautiful "Missa Brevis" written for Canterbury Cathedral Choir and a selection of carols with texts by our old friend "Anon." Although Bennett can be a challenging composer his work repays close attention and the singing on this hybrid SACD (which is playable on any standard compact disc player) is excellent.

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