How Are the Mighty Fallen: Choral Music By Giovanni Bononcini – Choir of The Queen’s College Oxford

This is the first recording not only of Ave Maris stella and Laudate pueri but also the original D-major version of Bononcini’s Te Deum. The work has been newly edited here from its English eighteenth-century sources. These works were written during Bononcini’s time in London, and a few months after his arrival the country was ravaged by a smallpox epidemic, which also saw the first introduction of inoculation against disease in England. It’s fitting therefore that this recording was made in the early summer of 2021, six months after the COVID-19 vaccination programme began in the UK. Despite the challenges that this caused, director Owen Rees says “it was heart-lifting to be able to bring this project to fruition after many months during which singing was silenced”.