Cambridge Singers Christmas Album

This brand new Christmas album from The King’s Singers features 25 tracks covering everything from contemporary choral gems and folk songs through to well-loved carols. Dotted throughout the album are several of the most famous English church carols, which take The King’s Singers right back to their earliest singing days, and which also reflect the group’s heritage at King’s College, Cambridge. In Christmas Carols with The King’s Singers, the group bottle that frosty, moonlit, fireside Christmas wonder and pour it into their sound.

To mark their 50th anniversary, the versatile King’s Singers returned home to King’s College, Cambridge, for a program spanning the entire history of Christmas music. It stretches from the perennial beauty of early plainsong to former King’s Singer Bob Chilcott’s magical “A Thanksgiving,” featuring the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. These two divine works frame sprightly Sweelinck, luscious Herbert Howells, and suave and swaggering Poulenc. The final quarter of this recording features touching arrangements of traditional and popular works, plus the delightful, moving “La Peregrinaçion.”

John Rutter has selected some of his favorite church anthems from previous releases of his music to put together the collection Be Thou My Vision. Most of these have full orchestral accompaniment, as Rutter prefers these versions over those with just organ, but there are also a few a cappella anthems thrown in as well, which sound just as lush and graceful as the orchestral ones. The brief, a cappella God be in my head uses a sixteenth century text and hints at the music used in churches from the same period. It is Rutter's smooth and rich, yet not complex, writing that has made his music popular with audiences and amateur performers alike. Of course, this recording features his own Cambridge Singers, with the City of London Sinfonia, all under his baton and sounding highly polished. The lack of pretense or condescension in his music is also appealing. Some of the texts he uses could have much more grandiose settings, and have had by other English composers, but Rutter always goes for a more simple elegance, usually with a serene calmness, also. O clap your hands and For the beauty of the earth use jazzy rhythms to give them a little more energy than the other works here. The compilation contains many of his more popular anthems, such as A Gaelic Blessing, All things bright and beautiful, and I will life up mine eyes from his Requiem. It's a fine sampling of his non-Christmas church music.

Stile Antico's 2015 release on Harmonia Mundi, A Wondrous Mystery, is a sublime collection of Renaissance choral music for Christmas, presented in a pleasant mix of familiar German carols and a mass, with tracks interspersed for the sake of variety. This makes sense in consideration of the group's broad audience, which may know such popular hymns as Michael Praetorius' Ein Kind geborn in Bethlehem and Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, or Johannes Eccard's Übers Gebirg Maria geht and Vom Himmel hoch, yet be somewhat at a loss with the motet and Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis by Jacobus Clemens non Papa, a composer beloved by early music specialists but not exactly a household name for lay listeners. However, the a cappella performances are consistently beautiful and soothing throughout, and the quietly joyous mood of the music fits the album's title perfectly. The 12-voice choir's blend is well-balanced and transparent, and the ambience of All Hallow's Church, Gospel Oak, London gives an ideal resonance for the group's small size and close miking.

Christmas with The King's Singers New music, old music, music from the Renaissance and Baroque, spirituals, folksongs, jazz and pop… The Beatles, David Bowie, swing, classical avantgarde, waltzes by Strauss, and musical theatre songs. Which genre of music are the King's Singers actually yet to interpret? Which style have they not yet captured within their unique global reach and within their transparent and intimate six-voiced sound world? One thing is for sure - when the King's Singers came together at the end of the 1960s in Cambridge, no one would have believed the success story that lay ahead of them. Some musical experts were scathing: a male-only vocal sextet was most likely to be found in the pop sector.