Performer: The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge
Conductor: Andrew Nethsingha
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Signum
Catalogue: SIGCD458
Release: 2016
Size: 1.08 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Chilcott: Shepherd’s Carol
02. trad.: The Holly and the Ivy (Arr. Henry Walford Davies)
03. Mathias: Sir Christèmas
04. McDowall: O Oriens
05. Ord: Adam lay ybounden
06. Ledger: A spotless rose
07. Whitehead: The Seven Joys of Mary
08. Rutter: Dormi, Jesu
09. trad.: Creator of the Stars of Night (Arr. John Scott)
10. Rütti: I wonder as I wander (version for choir and organ)
11. Davies: O Little Town of Bethlehem
12. trad.: I Saw Three Ships (Arr. Simon Preston)
13. Cornelius, Atkins: Three Kings (Arr. Ivor Atkins)
14. trad.: Ding Dong! Merrily on High (Arr. Charles Wood)
15. Warlock: As dew in Aprylle
16. Finnissy: John the Baptist
17. Carter: Mary’s Magnificat
18. Tranchell, Marchbank: People, Look East (Arr. Peter Marchbank)
19. Gruber, Blatchly: Silent Night (Arr. Mark Blatchly)
20. Milner: Out of your sleep arise
21. Poston: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
22. Gardner: Tomorrow shall be my dancing day
Christmas presents a golden opportunity to present brand new music to wide audiences, and the role played by St John’s College Choir in this area has been significant, as demonstrated by this new recording of contemporary choral works.
Featuring two works commissioned by the choir – Judith Bingham’s ‘The Clouded Heaven’ and Michael Finnissy’s ‘John the Baptist’. The programme begins with Bob Chilcott’s ‘The Shepherd’s Carol’ commissioned by Stephen Cleobury (a former St John’s organ scholar) for King’s College Choir, and ends with ‘Creator of the Stars of Night’, composed by another former St John’s organ scholar, John Scott. The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge is one of the finest choirs of men and boys in the world, known and loved by millions from its recordings, broadcasts and concert tours. A cornerstone of the great English choral tradition since the 1670s, the Choir is recognised for its distinctive, rich and expressive sound and is today directed by Andrew Nethsingha.
The St. John’s College Choir (men and boys) has enjoyed wide success with previous holiday releases, partly due to excellent engineering (Signum’s work in the St. John’s College Chapel here is exemplary), more due to the clarity of the choral singing, and most of all due to the fresh and coherent programming concepts offered by director Andrew Nethsingha. Here the concept is stated briefly in the booklet, along with a brief background on the mostly new music: Christmas music, annotator Charlotte Gardner notes, is inseparable from tradition, but increasingly the Christmas album serves to expose new music especially in the English choral tradition. So here you get a variety of short pieces (three-and-a-half minutes max), rooted in, but not hewing to, traditional carols, a few of them by well-known composers (John Rutter, Bob Chilcott, Peter Warlock), but the majority are by names that will be new even to many English listeners. The overall mood is meditative, with just a few of the bumping-along, organ-accompanied sorts of work; much of the music is a cappella. Sample I Wonder as I Wander by the Swiss composer Carl Rutti: it’s more than a setting of the American folk hymn, but not quite a fantasy of it. It might be termed a reflection on the hymn, and that formulation, one way or another, applies to many of the works on Christmas with St. John’s, despite their brevity. A wonderful holiday release with a good measure of seriousness.