• Frederick Delius’s A Mass of Life (1905), or Eine Messe des Lebens, opens with a choral explosion, only fitting for what turns out to be a battle of the will as expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche in Also sprach Zarathustra. The Bradford-born Delius used passages from the German philosopher he so admired – and who had great influence at the time of the work’s composition – for his humanist cantata for four soloists, double choir and orchestra, premiered at London’s Queen’s Hall in 1909. Many consider this overwhelming work the masterpiece of a composer still, nearly a century after his death, awaiting critical redemption. It doesn’t hold back, which makes others squirm.
A new recording, in German, may be the longed-for boost the mass needs. Mark Elder, a natural for this work, rouses his forces into life with subtlety and focus, as well as gusto. All praise to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Edvard Grieg Kor, Collegium Musicum Choir and soloists Gemma Summerfield, Claudia Huckle, Bror Magnus Tødenes and, in the prominent baritone role, Roderick Williams. I was converted.
• The English composer Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), organist at Winchester College and Chichester Cathedral, deserves maximum celebration in his anniversary year. Responsible for some of the most imaginative of Anglican sacred music, as well as spirited madrigals, he had a reputation for being a drunkard and reprobate. That image is now thought to be inaccurate: his full story is still being explored by scholars.
The excellent Irish vocal group Resurgam have added to the discography with Gentleman Extraordinary (Resonus), with Silas Wollston (organ; listen for the hand-operated bellows), directed by Mark Duley. Anthems and three versions of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis are interspersed with pavans and fantasias, played with sombre vigour by the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble. Of the anthems, try Alleluia, I Heard a Voice or Hosanna to the Son of David to discover Weelkes’s distinctive brilliance, expertly displayed here.
• In Clive Myrie at Christmas, the reporter and presenter introduces less obvious festive music, starting with the Christmas Overture by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and featuring Voces8 and the choir of St John’s College, Cambridge. Tomorrow, 1pm, Radio 3/BBC Sounds.
