Rutter And Talyor

For her second Deutsche Grammophon album, former Royal Harpist Catrin Finch plays music by the beloved British composer, John Rutter, as well as new pieces and arrangements of her own.

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 - Requiem & other sacred music (2003)
Timothy Brown - Choir of Clare College, Cambridge - City of London Sinfonia
Choral | EAC | FLAC+log+cue | booklet scans | Naxos 8.557131 | 1CD | 241 MB

Anyone who has ever sung the Rutter `Requiem' gets it in their bones, and it stays there. This may not be the most profound Requiem ever composed, but it is certainly one of the most beautiful.