Why buy a Christmas CD given you can now get any traditional carol online at a click? The challenge for any choir making a seasonal album – the trend now is for a more generic “winter” title – is to delve into the past or explore the new. In A Winter Breviary (Resonus Classics), St Martin’s Voices, directed by Andrew Earis, perform 21 tracks by 10 living composers, all premiere recordings. The range suits this elite small ensemble: from the near stillness of Sarah MacDonald’s Like the Snow in Winter to the catchy alleluias of Lucy Walker’s The Angels’ Song or the beguiling inventions of Roderick Williams’s Queen Elizabeth’s Winchester Carol. Also included here is a new cycle by Bob Chilcott, who, with his senior colleague John Rutter, has reinvigorated choral music immeasurably.
Elsewhere, Chilcott’s substantial telling of the New Testament narrative, Christmas Oratorio (Delphian), is expertly performed by the choir of Merton College, Oxford, with top soloists Sarah Connolly, Neal Davies and Nick Pritchard and the Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia, conducted by Benjamin Nicholas.
In terms of gleaming vocal purity, the Gesualdo Six, directed by Owain Park, are hard to beat. Their Morning Star (Hyperion) takes its title from Arvo Pärt but combines chant and early works (by Lassus, Byrd, Clemens non Papa) with new works by Joanna Marsh, Judith Bingham and Adrian Peacock. Park’s own O Send Out Thy Light is lyrical and radiant. Not so new but still beautiful, Herbert Howells’s Here Is the Little Door stands out. The dominant mood is quietude, contemplation.
Christmas from the Chapel Royal (Resonus) is more upbeat, with an ear to rousing old favourites – O Come, All Ye Faithful heads the list – as well as novelty and lively organ interludes. While they win a point by opening with a work by the Ukrainian composer Vasyl Barvinsky, they lose it for having no female composers (choral music has many from which to choose), but the performances are strong.
Opera stars cannot resist the lure of a Christmas album, most of which collapse into cringe-inducing schmaltz. An exception is the ever classy Lise Davidsen in her Christmas from Norway (Decca), with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra conducted by Christian Eggen: a model of restraint, who has held her nerve and resisted tinsel and jingles. Elegant arrangements of O Holy Night, Silent Night and others feature, with a range of Scandinavian repertoire and the exquisite Julvisa (Christmas Carol) by Sibelius. Plenty to discover here, wonderfully sung.
If none of this appeals, you can resort to the innumerable versions online of Ding Dong Merrily on High, including several across the years from the choir of King’s College, Cambridge (main difference: the hairstyles). There’s also a karaoke version if you must, but I’m settling for one by the Wiggles.
