Three Dramatic Cantatas recording

Blog by Paula Downes

Posted on 18/01/2026

On New Year’s Day, 2025, I woke up thinking that I really needed to work out how to get my Dad’s 3 Dramatic Cantatas recorded. These pieces had each been performed a few times, but not in a long time. Once again, I was terrified that if I didn’t get these down, they could be lost. The sheet music is for sale online, but a recording makes the piece real. We have cassette recordings, one with my Dad singing one of the solo roles on beautifully, but the quality is not great so I had been trying to work out how to get these works recorded for a while. Over Covid, I started preparing click-tracks so we could do multitrack versions but they never materialised. I had asked my friend and mezzo, Alison Daniels to sing the alto roles for the multitrack versions and she had agreed, so I asked her if she wanted to do live recordings now instead, which she was happy to do. She recommended her friend, baritone Jonathan Midgely, who sang in Ely Cathedral Choir with her, and when I got to know his singing myself, when I started depping in Ely Cathedral, I decided to ask him. I was very happy he agreed! I wanted to do the soprano roles myself.

On New Year’s Day, 2025, I realised that there was actually a fair amount of SATB chorus needed, and I didn’t know how I was going to be able to put that together. I suddenly had the idea of asking Will Sims, another baritone dep at Ely Cathedral, and also Director of Music of the Choir of Robinson Choir, Cambridge, if he would be interested in taking this on. I had seen on Facebook that he had recently done a recording with them, and I thought this might be a good project for them. He had told me that he loved my Dad’s music and was planning to perform and record the Song Cycle for tenor and piano, Old Love’s Domain with tenor Sam Madden. I wrote him the following email:

Dear Will,

I hope you have had chance for a rest! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Thank you so much for your interest in my Dad’s music and for recording Old Love’s Domain for Prima Facie - we are delighted!

I am writing to ask if you would be interested in recording (and performing if possible) some Cantatas by my Dad with Robinson Choir? There are three to record, all with piano accompaniment and soloists, 2 of them with SATB choir. I have already asked Alison Daniels and Jonathan Midgely if they would be interested in recording these with me doing the soprano/treble solos and they have said yes. 

I have attached the scores and information on the works is below - let me know what you think.

Have a good break and I look forward to seeing you soon!

All best wishes,

Paula

I was so happy when he wrote back and agreed, saying he would be "honoured" to be involved.

He went on to explain that there was a big group of leavers this year (75% of the Choir), so it would be best to go ahead sooner rather than later. The recording dates that would work for them would be in early July.

I was surprised and excited that this could happen so soon! Will has recorded for Prima Facie before so wanted to go with them again, and Prima Facie were happy to take this on, following the success of the Sonatas CD. They would bring in their own recording crew, and Will wanted to use Elliott Park as Producer. David was going to play the piano, and my Mum was happy to look after our daughters while we did the recording.

Robinson chapel on the first day of recording:

The Choir of Robinson College, Cambridge

This recording was very enjoyable. This is Jonathan Midgely’s account on Facebook:

On Thursday and Friday (yesterday) I had the huge honour and privilege of taking part in a recording of three wonderful Dramatic Cantatas by the late Andrew Downes. Will Sims directed his excellent Choir of Robinson College, Cambridge, with Paula Downes (the composer’s daughter), Alison Daniels and myself as the three principal vocal soloists and the valiant David Trippett (the composer’s son-in-law) on the piano. The Death of Goliath (1978) featured Alison as David, me as Goliath and Paula as Goliath’s long-suffering wife; while in Cain and Abel (1981) Alison played Cain, I was Adam and Paula was the voice of “the conscience of Adam”; and in A Child is Singing (1981) I was in the distinctly unpleasant role of “General Giah” (i.e. General Haig), with a brief but fantastically delivered cameo from Sam Madden as the messenger, and several other solo contributions also from within the choir, including our very own Harley Jones. (Yes, it was a very Ely affair!)

I’ve never particularly rated myself as a singer (especially technically), so I’m not exactly accustomed to working as a soloist in a musical-dramatic context, but I absolutely loved the whole experience. We were lucky enough to have a quite outstanding “booth team” of producer and engineer, who were amazingly helpful with ideas, insights, suggestions and creative curiosity and dynamism: exactly what one needs to help one raise the bar just that extra bit higher, and a great antidote to the self-conscious anxiety and pre-emptively defensive air with which some of us approach much of our regular music-making if we often anticipate being found at fault for one reason or another. It was a hugely exhilarating and liberating experience, and I really hope it’s not the last time I get to do this sort of thing!

As for the music itself, it’s stunning: a very individual mix of influences and resonances, including Britten, Tippett, Howells, Copland, Stravinsky, Ligeti and many more that I can’t pin down, and coincidentally, perfectly suited to being performed in Robinson College Chapel, which is more or less exactly contemporary with the three works we were recording.

It was also an absolute joy to spend two days of honest curiosity, enthusiasm and unashamed geekery with Paula, David, Will and the “booth team”, and without having to be as self-conscious as I often am about the likelihood of being yellow-carded on the grounds of being obnoxious! When a conversation turns to relatively obscure areas of English prosody and phonotactics “in the field”, and to specialists in that area whose YouTube videos I happen to appreciate very much, and when it’s not even me who brought it up, I know I must be in extremely good company!

Really looking forward to hearing the finished article now: my own involvement notwithstanding, I’d heartily recommend it! I really wish I had met Andrew Downes: he was clearly a brilliant man.

Blog by Paula Downes