By Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb International
01-Jun-2006

It should be little surprise to Willan and Elora-Edison watchers that this is so conspicuously successful a disc. A previous Naxos disc from the Elora forces, one of Canada’s very finest, was Faire is the Heaven which brought us Willan’s Marian motets as well as rare things from the pens of Gordon Slater, Imant Raminsh, Bryan Kelly and Sydney Campbell among others (see reviews by GH, JP and JQ). And that was a splendid conspectus, sung with great warmth yet clarity. If appetites were whetted for more Willan they have been handsomely met with this release.

Taking in the important Missa Brevis and Willan’s “greatest hit”, Rise up, my love, my fair one, we find in between these twin poles hymn-anthems and motets of varying sizes. In the heavenly kingdom opens and closes with grand and expressive power. The performance throughout demonstrates the strengths of the choir - clean, clear with a certain purity about it and with a fine blend. Willan’s music always sounds graceful and even when it makes powerful demands, as it certainly does with its high tessitura in Sun of righteousness, it possesses the great gift of unselfconscious melodic distinction - as in his hymn St Osmund.

There are impressionistic moments here and there, passing phrases which may remind one of, say, Delius. And there are some moments but much briefer in which one feels the weight of the Russian tradition - that’s certainly my feeling as I listened to the basses in the Hymn-Anthem Ye watchers and ye holy ones, a performance notable for the well calibrated weight of choral tone and the highly secure intonation of all voice types.

There are times when Willan consciously evokes earlier sonorities - he does so in O King all glorious - but such moments are relatively rare. Throughout we hear how expertly he judges the climax of a piece, how supremely he sculpts lines and there can surely be no finer example of this than the Anthem on Picardy, which grows with inexorable directness. That he can end with beatitude is shown in Christ hath a garden. And his capacity to be all embracing in these settings - archaic, yet timeless - is best invoked by his O praise the Lord, which builds to a joyful climax through the most acute and perceptive word setting and control of vocal nuances.

There’s really not a negative word to be said about either performances or works. The notes by Giles Bryant - who was responsible for the Willan B numbers listed next to the opus numbers - tell you all you need to know. And with first-rate sound in St John’s Church in Elora you have a first-cmore....

By William Kreindler
MusicWeb International
01-Aug-2006

Recordings of the works of Healey Willan seem to come in spurts. In 1982 there was the entry in the Anthology of Canadian Music series, which contained sixteen of his pieces. In the mid-nineties EMI of Canada produced several records of his church music, two of them with his own Choir of St. Mary Magdalene in Toronto. Priory Records has recorded three of his settings of the Evening Canticles in their Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis series. Now Naxos seems to have started a new wave with their CD of Anthony Wedd playing Willan organ works and this record of his sacred music (as well as the four works on their previous album Faire Is the Heaven). Let us hope that Naxos will continue with more recordings of this composer who registers - if you'll pardon the expression - with most listeners as the composer of a few liturgical works and Christmas pieces and an organ prelude or two. In fact he wrote in every musical form imaginable.

Willan wrote more than a few sacred works, hundreds in fact, ranging from fauxbourdons and hymn tunes to large-scale choral/orchestral works. One liturgical type he was fond of was the hymn-anthem, writing a number of them for both Anglican and Lutheran use. This disc contains three of the later Anglican ones; the first starts off as a straightforward setting of the tune, but develops into quite a sophisticated piece on Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones (Lasst uns erfreuen). The Elora Festival Singers handle this very well and really fill St. John’s church. Slightly earlier in date are the hymn-anthems on the tunes Picardy and O Quanta Qualia. The first is not especially interesting, but the second is much more impressive with wide harmonic spacing that the Singers have a great time with. Willan also wrote a Hymn Anthem on St. Osmond, but on this disc we have his own tune for the hymn and a fine one it is. The composer’s ability to write simply but not cloyingly is evident here.

Willan also wrote "original" anthems - more than thirty. The four performed by the Elora Festival Singers take in a range from when Willan was 27 up to the O Praise the Lord of 1963, written when he was 83. The earliest anthem and earliest piece on the disc is I looked, and behold a white cloud, written six years before Willan emigrated to Canada. This shows Willan still under the spell of the great Victorians, but is well constructed. The Festival Singers bring out all its best aspects. The anthem that gives its name to this recording was begun in 1924, but never completed - Willan would sometimes begin a new piece rather than finish an old one. In this case the composer and Willan-biographer F.R.C. Clarke completed it in 1979. Noel Edison gets a full, ceremonial sound out of this anthem, although the organ tends to be over-reverberant. The piece itself is somewhat uneven, but the second section and Clarke’s Alleluias more....

By Margaret Mc Namara
FM Program Guide
01-Sep-2006

The lives of Gerald Finzi and Healy Willan coincided in the first half of the twentieth century, though Willan's life span was much longer than Finzi's. They were born in England and were both musicians whose compositions enriched the field of vocal, choral and sacred music. Finzi remained in England all his life, known as a master of song writing and the founder of the Newbury String Players, while Willan, when he was thirty­three, moved to Canada and became the leading Canadian church musician of his time.