David Bednall, Wells Cathedral Choir, Matthew Owens - Flame Celestial

Published Monday 28th June 2010
David Bednall, Wells Cathedral Choir, Matthew Owens - Flame Celestial
David Bednall, Wells Cathedral Choir, Matthew Owens - Flame Celestial

STYLE: Choral
RATING 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
OUR PRODUCT CODE: 95192-
LABEL: Regent REGCD320
FORMAT: CD Album
ITEMS: 1

Reviewed by Steven Whitehead

This pleasant CD is the second volume of the choral music of David Bednall (born 1979). Thus the background is much the same as for our review of the first volume - 'Hail, Gladdening Light' from 2007 - which we awarded eight squares and other reviewers also applauded. Here on volume two Bednall continues to give us contemporary choral music for a cathedral choir, by which we mean that some of this material may be too challenging for many amateur choirs and also that many of the pieces sit more comfortably within a cathedral liturgy. We get, for example, four more pieces from "The Wells Service" to join the four from volume one. At the risk of repeating ourselves we again point out the fact that although Bednall is composing contemporary music he is working within and from a musical tradition that does not exclude melody. As we said above, the technical demands may place much of this beyond small choirs but the tunes are memorable and a competent director should have little difficulty in arranging the music to suit the ability of the singers (but not forgetting the matter of royalties, of course). Moving swiftly on, we once again salute Wells Cathedral Choir under the direction of Matthew Owens. The singers are a fine blend of boys, girls, and twelve adult male "Vicars Choral" and the quality is as good as any cathedral or Oxbridge choir. Yet again producer/engineer Gary Cole gives us a superlative audio experience and we are happy to recommend this to all who enjoy contemporary choral music.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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