Roderick Williams: Sacred Choral Works review – well-crafted and vibrant

Roderick Williams is not only the go-to baritone for UK composers and opera companies, he’s also a composer himself, with a growing amount of choral music to his name. It’s hardly at the contemporary cutting edge, but it doesn’t pretend to be; generally, this is well-crafted, singer-friendly stuff. The consoling first anthem, soupy but not saccharine, sets the tone for the next few, which include a jaunty carol setting of a strong Christmas text by Longfellow. But an itchy, angry setting of Quare fremuerunt gentes?, with Williams himself as soloist, shakes things up. The advent sequence O Adonai sags somewhat under its own harmonic ambition, but most of the music here would sound good in the hands of any decent church choir – and the choir of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, drawn mostly from neighbouring Trinity Laban Conservatoire and sounding vibrant under the rock-solid direction of Ralph Allwood, are more than that.