Although orchestras were not foreign phenomena to chapels and cathedrals – they were de rigueur in Charles II’s Chapel Royal and for coronations, while special thanksgiving services harnessed them as a special appurtenance of celebration – the fashion for using orchestral accompaniment began to gather momentum in the later 19th century, led by such institutions as the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy at St Paul’s Cathedral (where there was ample space to accommodate a larger number of players and singers) and the cathedral-orientated Three Choirs Festival. This gave rise not only to a tradition of original liturgical repertoire written for orchestra (such as Stanford’s Evening Service in A) but also to distinctive orchestrations of anthems and service music originally composed with organ accompaniment. Argo’s pioneering recording of 1991 with David Hill, Winchester Cathedral Choir and the Bournemouth SO (4/92) showed the way with works by Parry, Stanford, Elgar, Bairstow and Hadley. Other recordings such as Martin Neary’s programme of coronation music (Griffin) and Robert King’s important recording of Stanford’s orchestrations of his Evening Services (Vivat, 3/13) have provided valuable additions to the catalogue, but there has been relatively little exploration of this broad and rich repertoire.

The earliest piece on this recording, Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord, the Prologue to The Apostles (1903), appears in its original form for chorus and orchestra, though the extract (requiring a dexterous organist) has gained a life of its own as an anthem. Elgar’s early Ecce sacerdos magnus (1888), orchestrated in 1893, is a rarity, but even more so his 1929 orchestration for Worcester of Purcell’s Jehova, quam multi sunt, which gives us another taste of Elgar’s fascinating Mischung of the Baroque with Romantic timbres. By contrast, the somewhat ungainly original version for organ of Bairstow’s well-known anthem Blessed city, heavenly Salem (1914) has always been thoroughly suggestive of orchestral rhetoric, which, at least to me, makes much more sense in the version the composer later made for strings and piano (Hill’s Argo recording uses the organ). Indeed, the modal world of this lovely anthem has a strong Elgarian affinity, especially the closing elegy with its solo soprano, chorale and emotionally charged solo violin.

Written in 1928, Vaughan Williams’s Te Deum in G was composed for the enthronement of Archbishop Cosmo Lang but later orchestrated, with appropriate grandeur, by one of his pupils, Arnold Foster. Rather more opulent in sound is Douglas Hopkins’s orchestral realisation of Dyson’s Evening Service in D, which the composer wrote in Dresden in 1907 during his European Wanderjahre. I have often wondered why Dyson did not score up this work himself, given the orchestral ambience of the organ part, but eventually the task fell to Hopkins, sub-organist at St Paul’s, who orchestrated it for the 1935 Festival of the Sons of the Clergy. A fair testament to the orchestration skills of cathedral organists (whose techniques in the art were assessed for the FRCO and DMus), Hopkins’s score (which Jonathan Clinch happily discovered at the RCM) is an appropriate reflection of Dyson’s more opulent Straussian orchestral style. Also originally composed for choir and organ, Finzi’s festival anthem of 1946, Lo, the full, final sacrifice, is, at more than 13 minutes, almost a mini-cantata. Opinions are mixed as to whether the 1947 Three Choirs orchestration detracts from the numinous intimacy of the organ version but it certainly makes sense of the climactic centre of the piece, which is a particularly frenetic corner for the organist. The real gem of the recording, at least for me, is Behold, O God our defender, the Communion introit Howells composed for the 1953 coronation, a miniature of searing beauty in which the choral textures are cloaked in the composer’s post-Romantic, characteristically contrapuntal orchestral countermelody. It is very much a codicil to the yearning pages of Hymnus Paradisi.

Benjamin Nicholas maintains excellent control of his forces in a recording that is sonorously generous and forward in sound. The Merton choirs (including the soloists) are in fine voice and the Britten Sinfonia play a colourful and sensitive role in this engaging repertoire. Hats off to Delphian in what is their most ambitious recording to date.