Christmas round-up
Terry Blain admires the unshowy mastery of The Sixteen
SONG OF THE NATIVITY
The Sixteen/harry Christophers Coro COR16146 73:58 mins
Christmas CDS by famous choirs can have an element of routine or cashing in to them, but not this one. From the gorgeously shaped performance of Morten Lauridsen’s modern classic O magnum mysterium which opens the programme, to the urgent, ardent account of James Macmillan’s
O radiant dawn which closes it, The Sixteen give a masterclass in the art of unaccompanied singing, and in close emotional engagement with the pieces chosen. These are a canny combination of old and new. Boris Ord’s classic setting of Adam lay ybounden rubs shoulders with Howard Skempton’s anxiously pulsing version, while the traditional How far is it to Bethlehem? is counterpointed by Peter Warlock’s Bethlehem Down. Throughout there is an emphasis on the less familiar corners of the repertoire. Among these Will Todd’s tenderly ecstatic My Lord has come, Cecilia Mcdowall’s vibrant, chant-inspired Now may we singen, Alec Roth’s thrumming Song of the Shepherds, and Alan Bullard’s awestruck And all the stars looked down are particularly welcome inclusions. The Sixteen’s consummate technical ability has long been legendary, but it’s their ability to conceal it which is truly special. It puts the music front and centre, in this beautifully realised Christmas sequence.
The Sixteen’s consummate technical ability is legendary
JS BACH
Christmas Oratorio
Dunedin Consort/john Butt
Linn CKD499 141:19 mins (2 discs)
This is the latest in an acclaimed series of Bach recordings by the Edinburgh-based Dunedin Consort. It has the same sense of freshness as previous releases, with one singer to a part except in the three cantatas which use trumpets, where there are two. This leads to a pleasing transparency of texture, and nimbly sprung rhythms under John Butt’s scholarly direction. Arias and recitatives generally emerge more convincingly than choruses, where the recording struggles to integrate singers and players in a single acoustic, and the instrumental playing can be scraggy.
A WELLS CHRISTMAS
Carols by Chilcott, Carter, Mcconnaughey, Sargent, Willcocks, Rutter, Vaughan Williams, Owens et al
Wells Cathedral Choir/matthew Owens Resonus RES10176 61:54 mins
The boys and girls – 29 in total – who sing the soprano line in the Wells Cathedral Choir stand out for their contribution to this recording. They are seamlessly blended by choirmaster Matthew Owens, who has cultivated a bright, gleaming sonority, and the type of crisp attack heard to good effect in the Zither Carol. The lower voices are less well integrated, and the stylistic interface with the sopranos can be lumpy. But with zesty, freshminted performances of favourites
by Vaughan Williams, Rutter, Willcocks and others, this is a desirable collection.