It’s that time of the year again, and across our desks have come recordings of holiday music and stories to share.  Here’s a few that caught our ears:

CHRISTMAS PAST & PRESENT: A unique collection of carols spanning 500 years - Ex Cathedra Chamber Choir conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore - Resonance CD RSN 354 (59 mins.):

A totally charming, refreshingly unconventional program, recorded in 1994 and reissued at mid-price, this is one of a surprisingly large number of holiday CDs that will make the perfect holiday gift for music lovers who want the warmth of the season without the usual routine. In this case, the presentation captures a strong sense of Ex Cathedra's live performances, and the breadth of its Christmas repertoire.

The first two pieces set the context for the entire recital, in which music from contrasting periods and aesthetic sensibilities offset each other in a succession of celebratory glory. William Mathias's "Sir Christmas," an energetic piece which often closes the first half of the choir's holiday programs, the singers extinguishing their candles on the final jubilant shout "Nowell!" is followed by the comforting beauty of a chorale from Bach's Christmas Oratorio which, through the contrasts, takes on almost indecently sumptuous beauty.

Other highlights of the CD, to mention just a few, include the ethereal beauty of a Czech carol and a very jolly, definitely Pickwickian "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." The well-judged performances manage to keep a feeling of spontaneity without sacrificing polish or poise.

The sound, recorded at St. Paul's Church in Birmingham, where the choir is based, combines purity with deliciously subtle reverberation, enhancing the physical quality of the voices and the music.   

- Laurence Vittes

 

Noël - Carols & Chants for Christmas - Anonymous 4. 4-CD boxed set: 1: Legends of St. Nicholas; 2: Wolcum Yule; 3 On Yoolis Night; A Star in the East - Harmonia mundi HMX  2907411-14 ****:

After an 18 year career this purist a cappella female quartet of voices has decided (as of last year) to discontinue being a full-time touring and recording ensemble, and only get together for special projects and appearances. Well, they didn’t even need to assemble for this album, because it is a reissue of some of their holiday-themed recordings from 1993 to 2003. The first disc is devoted to medieval European chant and polyphony, the second to Celtic and British songs and carols of the Christmas season, the third to medieval carols and motets, and the fourth to Hungarian Christmas music of the medieval period.  On the Celtic album the 4 are accompanied by Irish harpist and psaltery-player Andrew Lawrence-King.

Besides being newly-remastered with probably better sonics than the originals of a decade ago, this set comes with a lavish 156-page illustrated booklet (in English and French) which presents an introduction to each of the four discs, complete words to every song, and individual descriptions for many of them.  Some of the background is quite fascinating, such as the alternate legends about St. Nicolas, which have him as a sort of early superhero who dealt much more cruely with bad people than just leaving coal in their stockings.

All the Anonymous 4 recordings are highly researched musicologically and beautifully recorded in reverberant spaces which add support to the voices and make the listener feel one is in a medieval cathedral or similar space listening to the music.  Their intonation is perfect and the polyphony fits together with greatest smoothness and accuracy. Each disc as 19 to 24 different selections on it. Please excuse my not listing them all herewith.
The Anonymous 4 proved that early polyphony and chant has a ready market if presented properly.  This set would be a most Wolcom Yoolis Night gift for any collector of early or choral music.

- John Sunier

Charles Dickens Classics = “A Christmas Carol,” starring Ronald Colman as Scrooge and Victor Young, musical director;  “Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas” told by Charles Laughton with music by Hanns Eisler - DGG mono 00289 477 5742, 39:47 ****:

Now here’s a different sort of Christmas recording that could well become a tradition in families (as was Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” in a family I knew). The dramatization featuring Colman with a large supporting cast, sound effects and music, was made in l941 - probably for a radio broadcast. Among the actors whose names might still ring a bell with senior readers: Hans Conried (as Jacob Marley’s ghost), Gale Gordon (Guildersleeve - remember?). The Laughton reading of excerpts from the Christmas chapter of The Pickwick Papers was done in l944 and is sure to leave any listener smiling.  Both original recordings have been skillfully noise-reduced and presented in the best possible sonics.

- John Sunier

I’ll Be Home for Christmas - The David Leonhardt Jazz Group (Leonhardt, piano; Nancy Reed, vocalist; Larry McKenna, sax; Taro Okamoto, drums; Matthew Parrish, bass) Big Bang Records BBR9576, 64:26 **** (www.davidleonardt.com):

There’s plenty of jazz Christmas albums out there.  My favorite is still the Columbia (now Sony) sampler from a couple decades ago that has been reissued with various titles.  It has tracks by Brubeck, Ellington and others but my favorite is Bob Dorough’s Blue Christmas - a Scroogie-sort of take on the holidays.  But this new self-published CD is the best in this genre I’ve heard this season so far.  Leonhardt says in the notes that his band has been together for some years and plays these tunes every holiday season. (I empathize: at this time of year I like to play the only one I do a jazz version of - We Three Kings.) His enjoyment of them comes thru - I don’t get the feeling this disc came about due to pressure from his record company (since there isn’t any, really). McKenna is a fine saxist, and although I tend to prefer all-instrumental Christmas jazz, Nancy Reed’s a good vocalist in these standards. The sound is thoroughly professional.

Tracks: Let It Snow; Oh Christmas Tree; Winter Wonderland; We Three Kings; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Comin’s to Town, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, God Rest You Merry, Sleigh Ride, It Came Upon, Frosty the Snowman, The Christmas Song, Here Comes Santa Claus, White Christmas.

 - John Henry

TCHAIKOVSKY: The Nutcracker (complete ballet); Serenade in C Major - London Symphony Orchestra; Philharmonia Hungarica/ Antal Dorati - Mercury Living Presence 3-channel multichannel SACD 475 6623, (2 Discs: 41:01, 68:00) ****:

This is the season of the most-performed ballet, The Nutcracker, and you can’t go wrong with this sparkling version from 1962, made in the acoustically-acclaimed Watford Town Hall in the UK.  The three-channel version provides a larger stage setting in both width and depth and enlarges the sweet spot for those listening, but the two-channel option is very close, especially if your center channel speaker is not matched closely to your left and right frontal speakers. Some may even prefer to feed the stereo SACD option thru their Pro Logic II processing for an enveloping surround field. This was one of the Mercuries mastered onto 35mm magnetic film and has a lower hiss level and more gutsy sonics  than the Serenade filler which was done on standard magnetic tape.

It’s fun to hear the less-familiar music of the complete ballet mixed in with the big hits such as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Waltz of the Flowers.  Dorati retains a strong dance feeling in his version which seems to conjure up the familiar ballet characters on your soundstage. The original notes and cover art from the original Mercury LPs are reproduced with the SACDs. I recall the excitement when those LPs were first issued - they were packaged and printed as something very special, and soundwise they clearly were - even on the less sophisticated cartridges and tonearms back then, which occasionally had trouble negotiating the gutsy groove geometry which Mercury cut into their discs!

- John Sunier

The Baroque Christmas Album - Works of BACH, CHARPENTIER, G. GABRIELI, SCHUTZ, CORELLI, PRAETORIUS - Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, The English Concert, Gabrieli Consort, Boys’ & Congregational Choir of Roskilde Cathedral, Musicians of the Louvre & Choir - John Eliot Gardiner/Paul McCreesh/ Marc Minkowski/Trevor Pinnock - Archiv B0005271-02, 69:55 ****:

Another Christmas reissue opportunity, but with the huge catalog at the disposal of DGG there was no problem bringing together 70 minutes of superb music of the season which originated in the  Baroque period.  Charpentier is prominent, represented by three works, of which the first is a delightful Noëls on Instruments played by The English Concert on authentic instruments. Giovanni Gabrieli, he of the first music especially created for spatial performance, also gets three selections - some of the striking brass sonorities of his canzonas featuring brass instruments (too bad it’s not a multichannel disc).  Both the Schutz works and three of the four concluding hymns by Praetorius feature a boys’ choir. The fourth work is one of the composer’s few for solo pipe organ. The entire disc is a fine musical compendium for Yultide.

- John Sunier

On Christmas Day - New Carols from King’s - Choir of King’s College, Cambridge/ Stephen Cleobury - Carols by RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT, ARVO PART, LENNOX BERKELEY, ROBIN HOLLOWAY, JOHN RUTTER, PETER MAXWELL DAVIES, PETER SCULTHORPE, JAMES MACMILLAN, HARRISON BIRTWISTLE, THOMAS ADES, NICHOLAS MAW, STEPHEN PAULUS and others - EMI Classics 5 580702, (2 Discs: 58:40 & 32:29) ****:

Upon close inspection it is evident this is not just a collection of the usual carols sung by the well-known King’s College Choir. Every Christmas Eve since 1918 the choir has celebrated A Festival of Nine lessons and Carols in the King’s College Chapel. Director Cleobury assumed his post in l982 and determined to bring contemporary music into the liturgies. He commissioned a new carol from a different composer every Christmas as an effort to bring new music to a large audience (the concerts had been broadcast since1928). A wide variety of composers have provided new carols each season - including some not associated with liturgical or choral music at all. There are 22 different composers in all here, each represented by one carol. Some are a cappela, some with pipe organ, and a lovely one by Giles Swayne has a solo flutist join the choir.  The words to all the carols are in the note booklet. I must admit that choral liturgical music is not one of my personal favorite genres, but I found this collection infinitely more interesting than the usual assembly of familiar carols.

- John Sunier

 

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS compendium - DG Original Masters Series - DG 000506802 (2 CDs, 2 hrs. 24 mins.) ****:

This totally delightful, heartwarming follow-up to its highly successful Christmas Album, released in 2003, continues DG’s survey of music produced during the 1950s. Familiar faces and voices appear once more, joined by once prominent artists retrieved from the label’s seemingly inexhaustible archives. 25 of the 50 tracks are new to CD; and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's recording of Adolphe Adam’s Cantique de Noël marks its first appearance.

The musical wonders are many, including tenor Fritz Wunderlich and baritone Hermann Prey in Renaissance songs; organist Helmut Walcha in excerpts from his magnificent mono Bach cycle; Fischer-Dieskau singing Christmas Lieder by Reinecke, Loewe and Reger; the Trapp Family Singers (without Julie Andrews), and choral music accompanied by the peal of bells and 19th-century musical clocks. There are excerpts from Fritz Lehmann’s crackling Christmas Oratorio of 1955 and Karl Richter’s stereo Bach Magnificat of 1961.

If it all sounds very anachronistically retro, it is no less effective for that. And hearing these early DG and Arkiv recordings, featuring some of the labels’ greatest artists in repertoire that must have been close to their hearts (and most of them in monaural recordings) is an opportunity to hear what totally authentic sound could be like in the days before it became an audiophile ideal.

- Laurence Vittes
 

 

 

 

 

 

---