“The King’s Collection.” Is it? Perhaps times have changed and this really is King’s. If so, too bad, because it would mean that the famous choir have renounced or subordinated the music in which they gained and exercised their great distinction. A “King’s collection” without Byrd is like a Salzburg Festival without Mozart. The unaccompanied Elizabethan anthems, introits, settings and responses are ideally suited to the constitution of the choir and the nature of the building. They are also, as a body of repertoire, a great deal better than some of the items selected here as though representing the choir’s specialities. Purcell, Blow, the Wesleys, Stanford, central to the English choral church repertoire, find no place here, nor does Howells, who has written magnificently for ‘Coll. Regale’. Instead, a poor Nunc dimittis that proved very effective as theme music for a television drama but has little else in its favour is accommodated, as is the anthem brought to some temporary prominence by its place in the funeral service of Princess Diana. Allegri’s Miserere runs its full length, once a sublime secret, now sufficiently familiar, and the organ displays its wonders not in Bach but in the flashy (if superior) minimalism of Widor’s Toccata. It would be forgivable to conclude that the programme was chosen for some reason other than an advancement of the appreciation of what is truly special about King’s, and that the ‘collection’ in question is of another kind.
Not that those who buy, attracted by the programme, will find themselves short-changed. The organ peals magnificently in the introduction to I was glad, the choir make a magnificent effect on their entry in Zadok the Priest, the soloist in the Allegri sails up to his six top Cs, and the basses sustain their full six minutes of bottom F in the Tavener. The trebles sing well as ever, the men perhaps less consistently so. The recorded sound is both clear and spacious, though informing us about the use of Schoeps MK2S and Yamaha O2R is rather like providing a menu with details of the make and setting of the microwave which is to cook our dinner. If we are going into detail, I would prefer to know (for instance) why they needed two organists (they have also an oboist) in “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring”.'