Fiona Maddocks 

The Feast of Saint Peter the Apostle

Fiona Maddocks enjoys contrasting choral works inspired by Westminster Abbey's patron saint
  
  


This music for Westminster Abbey's patron, St Peter, offers a nimble, not to say ecumenical chance to unite contrasting choral works on one disc. At the heart is Byrd's Mass for Five Voices, dating from the 1590s when he was a Catholic recusant, paired with Palestrina's richly woven motet Tu es Petrus, written for Rome and sounding slightly pallid and earthbound here. The choir sounds best in Stanford's quintessentially Anglican Service in B flat and in Walton's The Twelve (1965), to a text by WH Auden. Its flamboyant organ part and fugal "Twelve as the winds and the months" finale are intriguing and uplifting.

 

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