Briggs - Hail, gladdening light - Gramophone

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“In July 2022 the Chapel Choir of Trinity College Cambridge travelled to Paris to record in the church of Saint-Eustache with composer and organist David Briggs. This disc follows on from an earlier release (8/10) that had as its main work Briggs’s Mass for Notre-Dame.

The Jubilate Deo makes a sparkling opener, bursting with energy, atop a shimmering organ part. This is followed by the first of a quartet of organ improvisations by Briggs, designed to modulate subtly (both tonally and emotionally) between choral items.

Set me as a seal is the first of three pieces featured here that take on classic English sacred texts. While this new version will not necessarily supplant Walton’s evergreen setting of 1938, it is a thing of great beauty. God be in my head is notable for its melting sweetness and simplicity – Rutter meeting Duruflé, if you will.

Hail, gladdening light copies Charles Wood’s double-SATB a cappella plan and the acoustic of Saint-Eustache greatly enhances the antiphonal effect. Ubi caritas et amor was written for Briggs’s wedding in 2004 and offers an ethereal glimpse of paradise.

The Trinity College Fauxbourdon evening canticles resurrect a much older tradition in which plainchant lines alternate with increasingly ornate (and, in Briggs’s case, harmonically luscious) polyphony. Florian Störtz, who made such a profound impression in Trinity College’s recent ‘Anthems, Vol 1’ (10/23), intones with his customarily magnificent voice.

Briggs’s improvisations always bear repeated listenings. Two of those on this disc feature a melodic incipit that just hints at ‘I’m getting married in the morning’ from My Fair Lady. The Intermezzo (track 5) is distinctly avian, while the Cantabile that precedes the St David’s Te Deum is deliciously bluesy. The Te Deum itself is the most substantial work performed here and, in many ways, the finest, being coherent and exuberant in equal measure.

This album can be savoured on so many levels: as a masterclass in organ improvisation or for the radiance of Stephen Layton’s choristers and the rare opportunity to wallow in the marvel of an English choir in tip-top condition bathed in the vastness of Saint-Eustache. Nor should we ignore Trinity’s organ scholars, Jonathan Lee and Harrison Cole, who display their total mastery of the 101 stops and five manuals of the mighty 1989 Van den Heuvel organ.”

Malcolm Riley