Lyrita releases Missa Cambrensis recording

Lyrita Records releases the world première recording of Grace Williams, Missa Cambrensis, on 7 March 2025, with the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales conducted by Adrian Partington, soloists April Fredrick, Angharad Lyddon, Robert Murray and Paul Carey Jones, Côr Heol y March (music director, Eleri Roberts) and narration by The Very Rev'd Dr Rowan Williams (SRCD 442).

Inscribed to the memory of Grace Williams’s friend Nancy Elizabeth Jenkins, who died of cancer shortly before the work was completed, Grace Williams’s Missa Cambrensis is a full-scale setting of the Mass in Latin and Welsh, scored for soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists, mixed chorus, boys’ choir, orchestra and speaker. The orchestral forces required consist of two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, (second doubling cor anglais), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (two players: cymbals, glockenspiel, tubular bells, tam tam), piano and strings. Missa Cambrensis is Grace Williams’s magnum opus, the last major musical statement by a composer of rare integrity. It dominates all her other concert works, investing the score with a commanding, almost legendary status.

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