COMPOSERS: G Jackson
LABELS: Hyperion
WORKS: To Morning; Song (I Gaze Upon You); Cecilia Virgo; Orbis patrator optime; Ave Maria; Hymn to the Trinity (Honor, virtus et potestas), Not no faceless angel; O sacrum convivium; Lux mortuorum; Salve regina; Salve regina 2
PERFORMER: Polyphony/Stephen Layton
CATALOGUE NO: CDA 67708
Choral pieces which react in very specific ways to verbal and semantic nuance so easily make a bitty and episodic impression. That’s emphatically not the case, though, with Gabriel Jackson’s ‘Not no faceless Angel’, which takes a poem on bereavement as its basis.
Jackson certainly does ring the changes in the work’s ten-minute duration – whispers, quasi-Sprechgesang, and virtually full-on shouting in the vocal parts, a solo cello and flute as instruments of accompaniment. And yet the piece is triumphantly holistic in its impact, with some soaring, ecstatic soprano writing particularly catching the ear, and a wistful, touchingly deployed harmonic scheme etching out the poem’s poignant emotions.
The other piece of similar duration here, Salve regina 2, is quite different in style and character, with trill-like and nimbly arpeggiated effects built into the divided soprano writing, a more conservative use of harmony, and a predominantly bright, cheerful disposition.
Of the shorter works, the 12-part Cecilia Virgo, with its cascading, multi-layered downward scales, puts Layton’s choir through its paces, as does O sacrum convivium, where Polyphony’s unanimity of diction at much lower dynamic levels is hugely impressive. In this particular repertoire, it’s difficult to imagine performances of greater distinction. Terry Blain