Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge - Mendelssohn: Church Music (1997)

As (one would think) nobody in the record industry needs to be told, these are competitive times. Only a few years ago a recording in such an interesting and out-of-the-way area as this would have been welcomed for its repertoire alone, but except in certain items it is by no means first in the field and therefore has to look to the fine details. Even the printing of the booklet counts. From the text of Psalm 22 four lines are missing: important ones which contain the prophetic words “All they that see me laugh me to scorn”. In the list of contents, the timings are unreliable, 3'53'' being given for the Kyrie eleison (1'08''), 1'47'' for Ehre sei Gott (3'50'') and so forth. More important is what many would consider a lack of foresight in the programme: the second and third of the psalm settings (Op. 78) are included but not the first. This immediately yields a point to the most likely opposition, the fine and comparable recital by the Corydon Singers, who include all three. Such considerations may not determine what people will buy, but putting oneself in the position of someone who does buy this new Nimbus issue one would suppose them not to be best pleased on discovering that another disc has to be purchased (probably the Corydon one) to complete these marvellously written settings.
If the standard of performance and recording were distinctly preferable, then that would restore the balance, but, imaginatively as the St John’s Choir sing, they, and the recording, cannot quite match the solidity and cohesiveness of the Corydon. In some instances, Christopher Robinson and his singers do indeed have the livelier ideas (Ehre sei Gott with its vigorous sforzandos is an example), but for the most part (compare them in Psalm 22) the Corydons combine maturity of tone and clarity of insight more satisfyingly.
One strength of this St John’s programme is that it includes the Op. 23 complete. Others listed on the Gramophone Database omit the first section, “Aus tiefer Not”, which is a small cantata in its own right, and a fine piece of work. Like the Corydon, St John’s also offer Hor mein Bitte, known in English as Hear my prayer. Again the performance is not quite competitive (the current choices here run to at least 25 versions). And is it really true, as Geraint Lewis’s accompanying notes claim, that the German text “strips away a lot of the mawkish Victorian veneer”? There may have been something mawkish mixed up in the response to the famous Temple Church Choir’s recording but the performance itself (“Oh, for the wings of a dove” and all) is remarkably forthright and unsentimental, and the text is irreproachably biblical.'