critical praise for Luceat 'Assumpta est maria'
- Jim Fellows
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
MUSIC WEB INTERNATIONAL, SEPTEMBER 2025
I recently had the pleasure of attending one of the concerts by Luceat on their third East Anglia Tour and as a result am pleased to review here the first of their two releases on the Hymnus label. To introduce this choir to those unfamiliar with it, I quote their website: “Founded in 2017 by director James Fellows, Luceat was established to sing a week-long residency at Peterborough Cathedral. Designed primarily to give young singers the opportunity to perform in some of Britain’s most beautiful spaces, the choir has gone from strength to strength, and now brings together some of the finest young voices in the country. Many of our members sing in ensembles such as Genesis Sixteen, 24 and hold choral scholarships in the UK’s premier collegiate environments. Luceat also counts a number of more experienced professionals among its members, including many current or former lay clerks, who bring a wealth of wisdom and insight to the choir’s rich sound.”
With regards to this, their recording under review, I will again decline to re-invent the wheel and instead once more quote their website which describes it as “a liturgically-structured disc, presenting a full complement of music that might be expected at Mass and Evensong for this great feast. Recorded in the stunning setting of the Guild Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon, Luceat fuses an eclectic programme, drawing upon some of the finest names of the past 500 years, alongside lesser known gems.”
The recording features a number of world premières, notably, the first mixed-choir recording of Francisco de Peñalosa’s Missa Ave Maria Peregrina, alongside Gaudeamus Omnes, a substantial double choir work by the 16th century Bolognese composer Andrea Rota. The choir’s specialisms lie largely in the Catholic tradition of polyphony and chant, as well as the rediscovery of earlier works.
The listener will first immediately be struck by two things: first, the breadth and resonance of the recorded sound, suggestive of a grand space with a high nave, rather than the more intimate acoustic more often adopted by choral groups recording these days; secondly, the beauty and grandeur of that opening polychoral work by Rota, despite it lasting only two minutes. The sonorities achieved by the double choir and their adept negotiation of its sudden rhythmical changes are impressive. The ensuing Kyrie from the other world premiere, Peñalosa’s mass, makes for an interesting contrast, as it obviously still has one foot in an earlier, almost medieval musical world as opposed to Rota’s work, which is so evidently composed in the central idiom of Counter-Reformation polyphony. The vocal lines weave around each other most enticingly and the balances among them are mostly very good – although their times when I would have liked to hear a more robust bass presence. The two, brief plainchants between the Gloria and Sanctus of the mass help to counter any sense of this being a choral “performance”, instead reinforcing the impression of our eavesdropping upon a devotional service.
We start to move slightly ahead in time with William Byrd’s communion motet Optimam partem elegit from the early 17C, full of piquant false relations, then we advance further with a skilfully played Organ Voluntary by Bach, which forms a kind of fulcrum in the programme here, heralding the switch from the emphatically Catholic to Protestant, predominately Anglican, liturgy for the Choral Evensong. Hereon in, the music is uniquely 19th and 20th century, by composers well known to those familiar with that tradition. At its centre are the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis of Francis Jackson and I am struck by how the choir sounds as comfortable, confident and idiomatic in their singing of this music of a genre very different from the Renaissance polyphony which forms the first half of this programme. I suspect that the Mendelssohn Ave Maria will be a novelty to many as it was to me, although it is typical of his warm, melodic, open-hearted style. I very much like its faster-moving central section beginning “Sancta Maria”, which is vaguely reminiscent of the same words sung by the chorus of peasants scattered in the wild ride at the end of Berlioz’ La damnation de Faust. We conclude with what I am sure are two much more familiar pieces: a hymn set to the famous tune Abbot’s Leigh, which readers brought up in the Anglican tradition will more readily recognise as ““Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken” rather than the text employed here, “Sing we of the Blessed Mother” – which is of course more appropriate to the theme of this recording. It is given a splendidly rousing performance; equally stirring is Rory Moules’ rendering of the ‘Final’ from Widor’s Sixth Symphony, which forms a suitably jubilant conclusion, recalling the exultation of the opening Gaudeamus and thereby bringing us full circle.
Downloads of the handsome booklet with texts, biographies and colour photos, and of the High-Res Album Artwork are available on the Luceat website.
Ralph Moore
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