Sacred sweetmeats, liturgical lollipops, whatever the appropriate term might be, the majority of pieces here are readily likeable, short and easy. With one exception all are good of their kind, and the performances (it almost goes without saying) are excellent. Every choir deserves a break from Byrd and Palestrina and the normal fare on the weekly service lists: certainly none arouses more interest in such a programme than does Westminster Cathedral.
Rossini, Grieg and Severac are definitely not service-list names. Rossini's O salutaris hostia might earn a regular place, for it shows the choir in a fine light, building its tone to a full-bodied fortissimo, and gaining strength and character from the unusually mature sound of the trebles. Grieg's Ave maris stella has some charmingly characteristic song-like touches and Severac's Tantum ergo an attractively carol-like melody. The Schubert, Mendelssohn and Faure all enjoy the gift of grace (and the treble duettists in ''I waited for the Lord'' do particularly well). It's good to hear ''Jesu, joy of man's desiring'' in the English version by which so many people know it—but do they know (I didn't) that the words were written by Robert Bridges? A greater joy still is to have Spenser's words in William Harris's magnificent setting of Faire is the Heaven; and what life and conviction the choir brings to it (compare the whey-faced opening of the King's College recording under Cleobury—EMI, 6/93).
The items by Holst are also welcome, more so to my mind than Franck's Panis angelicus from which the record takes it title; and Colin Mawby's own Ave verum corpus deserves its place more than does his arrangement of the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria. The booklet-note refers to the ''rather saccharine'' quality of Gounod's work, claiming that the choral arrangement creates an atmosphere ''markedly different''. When the original is tastefully performed, as by Ann Murray and Graham Johnson in Hyperion's new French Song Edition (see page 92), talk about thickening the Mona Lisa's eyebrows seems distinctly less apt. The saccharine content of this arrangement (and many others) is far higher than in what Gounod himself wrote.'