Goodall - Pelican in the Wilderness -

Enchanted Voices; Tippett Quartet

Classic FM CFMD13 Buy now

Goodall
‘Pelican in the Wilderness – Songs from the Psalms’
By the waters of Babylon. Pelican in the wilderness. The Lord is my shepherd. O pray for the peace of Jerusalem. He shall keep the simple folk. How lovely are your dwellings. A good man is merciful. Thou walkest with me. Out of the deep. Have mercy on me. Heare, or heare me. Though rivers roar. Lyke a freshly planted tree
Daisy Fancourt org/pf
Tippett Quartet (Jeremy Isaac, John Mills vns Julia O’Riordan va Bozidar Vukotic vc)
Enchanted Voices / Howard Goodall
Classic FM CFMD13

As Classic FM’s Composer in Residence, Howard Goodall certainly knows his market. For this third album composed for his hand-picked Enchanted Voices he has produced 13 exquisitely jewelled “Songs from the Psalms”, companion pieces, perhaps, for the Vicar of Dibley’s ubiquitous Psalm 23, bedecked here in its string quintet, organ and piano guise. The 13 singers – all soloists in their own right – blend together seamlessly, a process helped by the judicious application of some digital reverberation, courtesy of the Cathédrale Saint Alain de Lavaur in the Midi-Pyrénées!

Goodall’s melodic gift is well to the fore throughout the disc. Even when at his more angular (for example, in “O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem”) everything seems to fit the text with ease. He produces ample textural contrast, too, with plenty of solo voice phrases counterbalanced nicely by close harmony or unison sections.

This is superior, diatonic, ultra-legato easy listening, albeit heartfelt and honest, though there are times when Goodall almost out-Rutters his senior composing colleague, in terms of sweetness. The instrumental accompaniments are beautifully and luxuriously played. The Tippett Quartet is on top form; John Mills’s violin solo in Psalm 139 (“Thou walkest with me”) evocatively harks The Lark Ascending. The digital organ played by Goodall’s step-daughter, Daisy Fancourt, adds a beguilingly “churchy” multitude of keyboard timbres, from a chiffy Faurésque In Paradisum-like spinning wheel to some harp-like harmonics in Psalm 111 (“A good man is merciful”).

Having covered (in their three albums thus far) a new approach to The Beatitudes, Carols and now the Psalms one wonders where Goodall and his heavenly choristers will head next. Malcolm Riley