'Simple Pictures'
'Simple Pictures' is the ULCC's first ever CD.
You can buy copies before and after our concerts or online.
About this CD
This recording reflects the varied and contrasting repertoire that the ULCC performs each year. We include well-known gems of early music by Byrd, Tallis and Pitoni, acknowledging the strengths of English and Italian choral writing of the renaissance. More romantic styles are found in Verdi's setting of the Lord's Prayer – Pater Noster – indeed it is positively operatic and many musical and dramatic idioms found in his operas and his Requiem are displayed in miniature here. Naylor's seldom performed Vox Dicentes: Clama is an example of the revitalisation of English choral music at beginning of the twentieth century. This is a double choir tour de force with a complex fugue in the middle as well as exuberant and contrastingly delicate musical touches. We include contemporary choral music from the French composer Olivier Messiaen with his beautiful O Sacrum Convivium and the more anguished and challenging Agnus Dei of Krzysztof Penderecki. The American composer Eric Whitacre has unleashed a new harmonic choral vocabulary which has captured the interest of choirs around the world. Two contemporary English composers complete this recording: Gabriel Jackson and Bob Chilcott, whose Simple Pictures of Tomorrow has inspired our title. COLIN DURRANT