Howells: Collegium Regale CD review – full-bodied and lustrous

Hyperion’s trailer for Collegium Regale

Much as John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Geoffrey Clarke created a new aesthetic in 20th-century visual art, so Herbert Howells did in liturgical music, particularly in his complete canticle settings for King’s College, Cambridge. So it is fitting that the fine choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, chose Coventry Cathedral for this recording, a building graced with windows, tapestry and sculpture by those artists that perfectly reflects both the beauty and the darkness of these settings. The excellent singing is full-bodied and lustrous throughout, with just the right sense of momentum. Particular mention for tenor Jamie Roberts for his plangent Nunc dimittis.