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Linked sweetness long drawn out.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 08/04/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Listening to the beautiful, heart-felt singing this recent CD brings, I find it difficult to realize how much it derives from times long past. The choir was founded in 1901 by Sir Hugh Roberton. For 50 years he prepared and conduced every performance, composed and arranged much of its repertoire, submitted all its members to yearly auditions, and earned from its members the nick-name `The Boss'.



For its repertoire, Roberton sought even further into the past, resurrecting many traditional Scottish airs, psalm tunes and many settings of poetry by Robbie Burns.



The choir's recorded legacy dates from the late 1920s and the late 1940s. Neither period was a successful time for recording choral music. Everything on this CD dates from the latter period, and reviewers of the time frequently complained that the choir was recorded in an acoustic that muffled the words and blurred the vocal texture.



Regis engineers have solved most of these problems, but there seems to be a little more "boom" added to the bass line than could have come from the singers' throats. Expect a program of mainly slow items, allowing you to hear the beautiful enunciation of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, exemplifying John Milton's "linked sweetness long drawn out". One of the livelier items, however, is "Of Mice and Men" - all the more welcome because it has not often been reissued on CD."