"Over time I have got used to the very high quality of Somm's engineering, presentation, programming and performances.  But even by those high standards this is a very fine disc indeed - possibly one of their finest."

"I absolutely love the idea behind this disc - intriguingly titled "The Gluepot Connection" and the resulting programme is pure genius."

"Any concerns about the skill level of an amateur ensemble when approaching this very taxing music is quickly allayed. Particularly when the music is written with the parts relatively closely voiced - within the stave so to speak - Griffiths achieves a quite superb rich blend and balance across all the parts."

"… this new disc has a collective conviction and real sensitivity to the text(s) and an engagement with the varied styles of each composer that is massively compelling."

"Another factor is that Griffiths is very attuned to how the choir are alert to the detail of the text.  I like the way they engage with the words without any mannered over-pointing or the fussy musical phrasing that some choir conductors seem to mistake as being "musical".  Griffiths allows the musical lines to flow and quite literally breathe."

"The Rawsthorne premiere of the Four Seasonal Songs makes a good partner with the Moeran cycle... [they] are lucidly but demandingly written... The gem of the set is the third Autumn - chilly static writing beautifully illustrating Joshua Sylvester's 16th Century text.  Such is this music's instant appeal I am rather at a loss to explain how it has had to wait this long for a recording. Moeran's cycle [Songs of Springtime] turns up on a lot of this type of choral anthology. I enjoyed Griffiths' performance here as much as any. Again the great virtue of the choir's tonal blend and attention to the musical phrase plays great dividends in this subtly skilled work."

"The two Bush premieres are likewise real discoveries. The dedication of Like Rivers Flowing to the Llangollen Welsh Festival in 1957 perhaps explains why it is less musically radical than perhaps I was expecting. This is Bush the composer of the people for the people. Bush's Lidice is an intensely powerful musical response written in 1947 to the destruction of that Czech village by the Nazis as a reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Somm have included a photograph of Bush conducting the first performance on the site of the destroyed village; what a moving occasion that must have been. Bush's music is muted in its intense expression. Rather than any outburst of rage or anger, this takes the form of a mainly quiet eulogy with words by his wife Nancy Bush. The mainly homophonic writing giving the work a hymn-like character with dissonance firmly controlled. Again, quite how this work can have taken some 70 years to receive a commercial recording is a mystery."

"The Lutyens work Verses of Love... is another absolute gem. The most recent work on the disc dating from 1970, this piece by "Twelve-tone Lizzie" explores the possibilities of choral writing more explicitly than some of the other works here. The chords clash with a deliciously ringing brilliance and Lutyens uses glissandi and harmonic clusters to capture, as Griffiths puts it so well: "the hushed rapture of Ben Johnson's text". Aside from Bax's Mater Ora Filium, this is the longest individual work recorded here, another real find. It is challenging for any choir but performed here with exactly that sense of rapt intensity that is very hard to sustain but utterly compelling to listen to."

"Walton's Where does the uttered music go? gets a very fine performance. So does the big Bax tribute to the Byrd Mass in Five Parts: Mater Ora Filium which closes the disc. This has been frequently recorded and it is one of Bax's masterpieces... This current performance by Londinium caps off this excellent disc very effectively too, not wholly displacing Allwood's version but certainly running it close."

"Backing up the artistic excellence of this disc is Somm's reliably fine presentation... The extended liner essay by Andrew Griffiths is insightful, affectionate and informative... production and engineering from Adrian Peacock and David Hinitt respectively is very fine... I am a fan of Somm - they produce consistently impressive discs - but even by those standards this is rather special."

Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International (March 2018)

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