Stanford
Choral Works
Trinity College Choir, Cambridge/Stephen Layton
Hyperion CDA68174

We have long needed a first-class, user-friendly collection of sacred Stanford. Now we have one. Too often this repertoire is made to sound wholly English, and the Irish-born, German-trained Stanford was anything but. So congratulations to the performers here (sumptuously recorded), for their unfailing energy, dash, and force, banishing all suggestions of Hyacinth Bucket and Jane Marple.

The Te Deum, in the composer’s own rearrangement with brass and timpani as well as organ, evokes at times Lully praising Louis XIV. Elsewhere, as with the strangely neglected For Lo, I Rise Up, occasional hints of Wagner and even of Stanford’s old foe Richard Strauss occur....