Various: Christmas through the ages - Six of the best (CD Review - BBC Music Magazine, 2001)

If audience participation muddies the join-in carols in the King’s disc, here’s something cool, poised and honed to perfection. The breathtakingly precise Polyphony under Stephen Layton sing my favourite performance of these exquisite motets. Poulenc gives us the eery depth in ‘O magnum mysterium’, the inimitable delicacy of ‘Videntes stellam’ and breaks into peals of robust joy with ‘Hodie christus nadie est’. There’s nothing quite like this sequence in all Christmas music – the innocence of pure driven snow mixed with arch Parisian style.

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