A Voice from Heaven CD review – lushly romantic British choral works

Watch the trailer for A Voice from Heaven.

Recorded in the Lutyens church of St Jude’s, Hampstead, this album of unaccompanied British choral works shows the 28-strong Choir of the King Consort, especially known for baroque performance, in a rich, lushly romantic light. Texts in more than one version (as with “Bring us, O Lord God” and “Drop, Drop, Slow Tears”), are set by 11 composers from the past 120 years, from Stanford and Parry to James MacMillan and John Tavener. Herbert Howells’s dark “Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing” (1964), written after the death of John F Kennedy, and William H Harris’s magniloquent setting for double choir of Spenser’s “Faire is the Heaven” stand out.