Hearing Secret Harmonies

Having finished marking for the day I'm now listening to a rather tasty CD I bought years back, featuring choral pieces by Ralph Vaughan Williams and William Howells as performed by the Corydon Singers, one of those absolutely brilliant choral groups that seem to emerge naturally from the English soil. It's on the Hyperion label. a guarantee of quality that's very useful to an innocent like myself, finding my way around the repertory. And it's a reminder that I simply must get hold of a recording of Howells's Hymnus Paradisi, an astonishingly beautiful, heartfelt requiem for Howell's son who died tragically young. I've heard the piece on radio a few times (actually back in the eighties) but somehow never got round to buying it.

I'm not quite sure why this is, but the slight resistance I have towards operatic voices melts away when I'm listening to a chorus. Then all seems natural and true. But curiously I don't really play or listen that much to choral stuff here. Somehow it doesn't fit the climate. In fact, I don't think I would have bunged on my current listening - though I'm very glad I did - if not for attending the choir concert yesterday evening. We had a thoroughly good time. You can't really fail to do so listening to and being warmed by the exuberance of youth. And it's so relaxing to watch a show that you're not obsessing over such that every detail can both cheer and pain. It was also a reminder of the curious innocence of the voices of young boys and how effective that can be in its own right (something Britten would no doubt have concurred with.)

For some reason I'm also thinking of brass bands, another quintessentially English sound. Why don't I have anything on CD? When can I put this right?