John Rutter

John Rutter’s glorious stream of Christmas miniatures has made him, for many, an essential ingredient in the festive season. The composer and conductor wrote what is probably his most popular piece, “Shepherd’s Pipe Carol,” while still an 18-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge—and he has never looked back. “Once I started writing carols, somehow it seemed difficult to stop,” Rutter tells Apple Music. “I’ve been doing it ever since.” Realizing that he had a “backlog” of them led him to I Sing of a Maiden, an EP of five new pieces recorded in July 2021. “I’m asked, ‘Do you still enjoy Christmas?’ And actually, I sincerely do,” says Rutter. “Christmas carols are a resilient form of art—folk art, as I’ve often suggested—that have attracted some extraordinarily fine composers. They were adding their little tile to a centuries-old mosaic of devotion, praise, joy, prayer, and celebration. It all makes up that extraordinary season of the year that we call Christmas.”

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.

This generously programmed disc provides excellent value and outstanding performances of both major and lesser-known masterpieces of French choral music. The Fauré Requiem has been recorded many times, and several excellent versions of the original orchestration are available on disc. This one is among them, owing to John Eliot Gardiner's experience and perfectionist mastery of details overlooked by less-successful choral conductors. The real bonus here is the inclusion of the popular but very difficult Debussy and Ravel chansons, and the rarely heard but eminently worthy little part songs by Saint-Saëns. These pieces are a lesson in how to achieve maximum effect with the simplest materials.