: Songs of Farewell - Tenebrae, Nigel Short

Following a string of five-star reviews for their previous discs of 20th-century French choral music (Poulenc’s Figure Humaine ) and Renaissance polyphony (Victoria’s Requiem), the professional chamber-choir Tenebrae go from strength to strength with this new recording of British partsongs and choral music – centred on Hubert Parry’s Songs of Farewell.

Composed towards the end of Parry’s life, the Songs of Farewell have taken on something of an epithetical interpretation; they are almost a musical summation of his compositional life, reflecting Parry’s love of English renaissance madrigals and partsongs as much as the influence on his work from German composers like Brahms – made more complicated as these works were composed as the country (and its music) fell out of favour at the start of the Great War.