The Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge - I Was Glad (2024)

A collection of Parry's best-loved choral works, including 'Songs of farewell' - together with a rarity, the beautiful partsong 'Music, when soft voices die'. For the last twenty years the 'Songs of farewell' have been a repertoire piece for the Chapel Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge, and singers who were former members of the choir during that period were invited to join the current (2023) choir to take part in the recording of the 'Songs' on Saturday 18 March 2023. The following day all Chapel Choir alumni were invited to join them for the remainder of the recording. This choir of over one hundred singers bestow a richness to the larger-scale anthems: 'I was glad', 'Hear my words, ye people', 'Blest pair of sirens', and 'Jerusalem' - the last recorded in Joseph Wicks's transcription for solo organ of Sir Edward Elgar's lavish orchestration heard annually at 'The Last Night of the Proms'. The logistics of finding a suitable venue for making the recording - easily accessible for alumni from across the country, large enough to accommodate the number of singers, with a suitably rich acoustic, and a large English Romantic organ which could do justice to the accompanied anthems, led us to the Church of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London. This recording is released as a celebration of the work of the Chapel Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Professor David Rowland, who marks forty years as Director of Music at Christ's College in 2024.