Remember – 130 Years of Canadian Choral Music
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; Jean-Sebastien Vallee
ATMA ACD2 2882 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/remember-130-years-of-canadian-choral-music)
Fifteen a cappella works, variously sung in English, French, Latin, German, Hebrew and Arabic, offer what Rena Roussin, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s musicologist-in-residence, calls in her booklet notes “a time capsule of musical touchstones and reflections across 130 years of Canadian choral music history,” the span of the choir’s existence. (Seven selections are performed by the choir’s 24-member professional nucleus, the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers.)
The two-CD set opens with the collection’s title work, Stephen Chatman’s hauntingly beautiful Remember, the second of his Two Rossetti Songs. It’s followed by the gentle hymn, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, by the TMC’s founder and first conductor, Augustus Stephen Vogt. The one piece not by a Canadian, Mendelssohn’s robust setting of Psalm 43, Richte mich, Gott, was performed at the eponymous choir’s debut on January 15, 1895.
Other standouts are Harry Somers’ elaborate arrangement of She’s Like the Swallow, Healey Willan’s much-loved An Apostrophe to the Heavenly Hosts (at nine minutes, the collection’s longest work) and Imant Raminsh’s luminous Ave verum corpus. Also represented are Ernest MacMillan, Srul Irving Glick, Peter-Anthony Togni, Christopher Ducasse, Andrew Balfour, Jocelyn Morlock, Stuart Beatch, Shireen Abu-Khader and Stephanie Martin, the last six by pieces composed between 2018 and 2022.
At only 84 minutes, this wide-ranging collection could easily have been augmented with works by three significant Canadian choral composers, surprisingly absent – R. Murray Schafer, Ruth Watson Henderson and Eleanor Daley. Nevertheless, there’s much lovely music and lovely singing here to enjoy.
