Throughout the piece Blake’s music is highly effective and well suited to his chosen texts. Also highly effective is his charming setting of William Blake’s ‘A Cradle Song’ to anchor the Nativity element in Part I.

Richard Edgar-Wilson acquits himself very well here and in everything else that he does and David Wilson-Johnson is authoritative and characterful…Patricia Rozario’s characterisation of Mary sounds well-nigh ideal throughout. With excellent contributions from London Voices and the RPO this performance under the composer must be counted as definitive in every respect.

These are accessible and consistently interesting settings which would make an excellent addition to the Christmas programmes of enterprising choirs.

The music is accessible, enjoyable and rewarding. © 2013 MusicWeb International Read complete review

The emphasis on Mary makes for some interesting encounters, both musical and dramatic. Her spoken comments during the Annunciation—“What do you want from me? How can this be?”—seem like appropriate bits of midrash to me. (How could she not have said something like that?) Blake’s ‘Magnificat’ is all Mary—it’s her prayer, after all. (With the English text, it’s an affecting sequence, especially with some swirling orchestral colors accompanying the soliloquy.) The Virgin is also entrusted with much of the ‘Stabat Mater’, which is a bit jarring since Jacopone’s Latin text is a poetic commentary on Mary’s grief, not really her own personal statement. The drama comes across, though we must sit through two stanzas of interval-spinning before Blake finally turns the soprano loose with a haunting melody at “Pro peccatis suae gentis”. The libretto even has Mary borrowing Jesus’ “O, Lord, let this cup pass from me” as she contemplates King Herod’s murderous decree. An interesting twist, no?

Rozario is a bit pushy for my blood, but she certainly sells the role. (Blake wrote it with her voice in mind.) Baritone David Wilson-Johnson’s Satan is suitably sleazy; and I like the sweet voice of young Master Blake, the composer’s son, who sings the role of Jesus as a child. (He goes to school in Sweden, which presumably explains his accent.) Choral interludes like the ‘Cradle Song’ (William Blake), the ‘Stabat Mater’ shared with Mary, and the ‘Salve Regina’ are well written and well sung.

So while—excuse me—Blake’s handiwork isn’t the Second Coming of Messiah or the St John Passion, Naxos did well to bring it to our attention. The four Nativity Songs are of negligible interest. The choir sounds unpolished to the point of virtual sight-reading, and the recorded sound—so strong in the Passion— becomes dingy and dim. (Nice brass, though.)

Howard Blake himself conducts the soloists, the London Voices, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for this recording, which seems definitive.

The music falls in a 20th Century tradition of such works by Walton, Vaughn Williams and others similar. That is to say, it uses extended tonal-traditional means to express lyrically the dramatic import of the narrative texts. The Passion of Mary follows a modern oratorio vein; Four Songs of the Nativity uses the song form for some memorable Christmas fare.

Mr Blake is a composer of talent. These are some beautiful and moving settings. If you are an Anglophile in matters classical, you will no doubt want this one. I will file it happily on my “modern English composers” shelf. That is, when I am not listening to and enjoying it.