Sonoro - Canticle of the Sun - Choral Music by Stephen Dodgson - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

SOMM Recordings announces Canticle of the Sun, an album dedicated to choral works by Stephen Dodgson. This recording adds to SOMM's growing discography of music by this unjustly neglected and richly deserving British composer (the tag last year launched an ongoing three-volume series embracing Dodgson's rich and varied output of songs) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.The performances are given by the chamber choir Sonoro, one of the UK's foremost vocal ensembles. Described as Inchoutstandingly refreshingInch (BBC Music Magazine) and Inchabundant in vibrant colourInch (The Guardian), they are tonally immaculate and technically astounding in Dodgson's tuneful, yet challenging choral writing. They are joined in one work by Michael Higgins at the organ and in another by Katherine Bicknell on flute, while the remaining pieces feature the choir in stunning a cappella with soloists drawn from the choir throughout, and the entire programme is led by conductor and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Neil Ferris.The selection of works, all of them first recordings, reveals in Dodgson a genuine composer for voices - one of abundant gifts, and special among them a sensitive approach to word-setting. The album's titular piece, Canticle of the Sun (2008), one of Dodgson's last vocal compositions, sets a text by the prolific English poet John Heath-Stubbs (1918-2006). The cantata Four Poems of Mary Coleridge (1987) sets the texts for the unusual and striking combination of mixed voices and solo flute, played by Katherine Bicknell, a flautist of Inchsumptuous toneInch (The Straits Times, Singapore) and Inchstriking musical abilityInch (MusicWeb). Incredibly effective throughout, the contrast between voices and flute is particularly evocative in the wonderfully dark InchNocturne I (The Fire, the Lamp and I)Inch, with it's interplay between almost recitative-like flut