The five cantatas here are presented in bright-as-a-button performances by the New London Children’s Choir. I have one little negative—just a couple of times I feel conductor Ronald Corp chooses tempi that are a fraction steady. The upside is every word stays commendably clear which reduces the problem that there are no words printed in the liner—although they are available to download from the Naxos website I believe—but overall I think he could have pushed his young singers more. I remember we had just a pianist and I did not realise a version existed with an instrumental accompaniment. This is very simple, I guess aimed at school performers too. In Jonah-Man Jazz this accompaniment does sound rather perfunctory. But with those two minor carps out of the way the rest is all positive. The choir and all of the soloists are excellent. I like very much the fact that the choir do not sing with an overly rehearsed blanched tone. These are kids singing with gusto. Likewise the various narrators used in the works pitch the style of the narrative to perfection. They say their short linking lines simply and effectively, again nothing arch or knowing.

The pianist is the choir’s regular accompanist Alexander Wells who does a commendably good job throughout the whole disc. For my taste producer/engineer Michael Ponder has given the piano a slightly recessed position in the sound picture which detracts from the sharpness of attack of some numbers—an effect which compounds the impression that certain sections would have benefited from an extra 10% vim from the stick. The latest of the five works presented here is Prodigal from 1989. It seems irrelevant to state that stylistically little has changed in the near quarter century since Jonah. The formula works, the performers are not bothered about any musicological time-line so why change?

The most ambitious work here is Captain Coram’s Kids. At nearly nineteen minutes this is significantly longer than any of the other four cantatas as presented. It differs in other ways too; the story is historical rather than allegorical or biblical and the music is more overtly serious in relative terms. Thomas Coram was an 18th Century Philanthropist who founded the Foundling Hospital to care for destitute children. Famously Handel gave a charitable performance of The Messiah for the hospital as well as donating the manuscript of the Hallelujah Chorus. All of which rather neatly gives Hurd an ‘in’ to write pastiche baroqueries as well as music of a gently more lyrical and serious nature. One moment had me thinking of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast which came as a bit of a surprise! The accompanying group is expanded—logically—to include a string quartet and four woodwind. All of the playing here is a delight and adds to the impact of the piece.

This recording has been made with the support of the British Music Society Charitable Trust which in turn made use of the Michael Hurd Bequesmore....

Review By Rob Barnett ,MusicWeb International,April 2011

The works on this Naxos disc are lightly jazzy and must have turned generations of children on to concert music. They make confident and fearless communion with West End show-time, dance-band drum-kit and light Radio 2 style middle-of-the-road idioms. Jonah-Man Jazz is irresistibly swung, concise and just sentimental enough to snag its barb on the emotional apparatus. The unison children’s voices, whether in choral or more rarely in solo participation, have impudence and the aplomb to tease out the tension between occasionally grown-up emotions and young minds. They’re all a delight to hear and very much in the same line as the Horovitz and Flanders Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo though that post-dates by four or five years the first Hurd work. They all, in any event, make a very pleasing effect: a listening experience as well as a valuable musical workout for young singers and performers. Prodigal is in accustomed easy-going, melodically alluring and simple style with cross-references to the tradition established by the Mike Sammes Singers on Sunday evenings on the BBC Light Programme. The appearance of a speaker over the instruments—sometimes a child, sometimes an adult—aids the narrative arc of each cantata. In Rooster Rag there are solo voices alongside the choir among the torch-singer ballads, Busby Berkeley hoofering and Broadway show clichés. Swingin’ Samson even finds a moment for a nicely wheezing hoe-down. Alexander Wells adeptly plays his key role in delivering the catchy and often touching piano preludes and underpinning figuration. Three of the five pop cantatas follow Biblical stories which at the time might well have been familiar to then contemporary young performers. I wonder if that would be true now. Pity that it was impossible to squeeze on his other pop cantatas including Adam-in-Eden (1981) and Hip-Hip-Horatio (1974).

The present disc is a project financially supported by the British Music Society Charitable Trust Michael Hurd Bequest. The Trust was established to further the appreciation of the composer’s output. I do hope that there will be more Hurd works recorded with support from this source especially the complex ambitious pieces.

The cantata texts are not in the CD booklet but are on the Naxos website.

Corp has worked these many years with children’s choirs. He clearly has a sure judgement which aids in inspiring well-placed confidence in his young charges. It also instils in them an evident pleasure in music-making.