Summer In Winter by Jeremy Pike published on 2015-11-26T10:53:21Z Summer in Winter, a carol for SATB choir and organ by Jeremy Pike. It is a setting of words by the 17th century poet Richard Crashaw. Commissioned and premiered by Stamford and District Musical Society in 1988 it has been performed by the choirs of Manchester Cathedral, Chetham's Chamber Choir, Blackburn Cathedral, Chester Bach Singers, Chester Cathedral Choir and many others, & broadcast by the BBC. Here it is performed by the choir of Blackburn Cathedral. The score is published by Composers Edition. A preview is available here: https://composersedition.com/jeremy-pike-summer-in-winter/ Genre Classical Comment by MartinFrancisMoverley The result is that when all is said and done - despite the melancholy spaciousness of the Bassoon Concerto which I hear in my immediate ear - the true sonic and artistic image which arises is Vierne's 'Stele pour un enfant defunt' - the last work he played, on that burning day of 2 June 1938 - before collapsing onto the pedal low E and expiring during - or, rather, before commencing - the improvisation on a submitted theme which was to have crowned what was already to have been his last concert at Notre-Dame, if my memory serves me right. 2017-08-18T00:39:31Z Comment by MartinFrancisMoverley A humility and a pilgrim's faith in his craft informs this ambiguously joyful carol, which needs a top-flight choir and the published text on view to allow its remaining hidden riches to more fully register. The episodes seem to have as their Master Faure of the Requiem rather than Louis Vierne (who always cuts into the choral writing rather than commenting upon it) but it is a measure of Jeremy's catholicity of taste that in the last shadowland between choir and organ we do have a subtle few melding and melting notes - a cold fusion, as it were - between the two discrete elements at play 2017-08-18T00:38:49Z Comment by MartinFrancisMoverley Hearing this for the second time, I am struck by the exceptional structural lucidity of the conception. There are two harmonic treats: the movement into an ambiguous - fourfold - D minor and the contrasting lovely rise to the F sharp, then falling by a seventh and recalling very briefly the more facile tonal writing of a Weir or a Chilcott. Jeremy's great strength is never to confuse the icing with the cake. His style is so firmly rooted in his own warm, bluff, serious and discreet personality that - a few experiments and academic exercises aside - I cannot believe that his voice has ever been other than what we hear here: utterly original. 2017-08-18T00:36:33Z Comment by MartinFrancisMoverley Here however you join forces with us who inhabit the planet. Great but perhaps less exaltational. The Muses have you in their sights and greatness is close. 2016-04-16T13:10:16Z
