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Unlike many of his contemporaries and forbears in the classical music world, Benjamin Britten loved writing pieces for children and amateur performers. Saint Nicolas and A Ceremony of Carols beautifully represent this area of the composer’s interest.
That a polished new recording of these works from the Hyperion label emphasizes adult and highly-trained performers over the...
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols & Saint Nicolas - The Mail on Sunday
My Christmas Album of the Year is yet another exceptional Hyperion offering, this one featuring two of Benjamin Britten's most readily accessible choral works: A Ceremony of Carols from 1942, and the cantata Saint Nicolas from 1948.
Stephen Layton, one of our finest choral conductors, directs his Trinity College Choir in the...
2013 will be Britten’s centenary, so brace yourself for an onslaught of new and reissued recordings over the next 12 months. Saint Nicolas and A Ceremony of Carols remain two of the most beguiling, approachable works Britten ever composed. Hearing the opening of this performance of A Ceremony of Carols is initially a bit of a shock – Stephen Layton uses female voices instead of the usual boys’...
A Ceremony of Carols is most frequently heard sung by boy trebles – there is also an SATB arrangement by Julius Harrison, which, for all Harrison’s skill doesn’t really work in my opinion. However, in his excellent booklet note Mervyn Cooke points out that the piece, which Britten largely composed while on his sea voyage back from the USA to Britain in 1942, was conceived for female voices....
As the Britten centenary looms into view, it is good to be able to offer an enthusiastic welcome to this sparkling disc of two of his 1940s 'classic' scores. A Ceremony of Carols (recorded in 2007, early in Stephen Layton's directorship at Trinity College) is sung here by the evenly blended upper voices of his chapel choir. Layton's flowing speeds underline the dramatic sequence of the carols (...
With this ideal coupling, Stephen Layton and his choral forces are getting in early with Christmas and Britten centenary celebrations. A Ceremony of Carols is so associated with boys' voices, it comes as a shock to learn that it was conceived with women's voices in mind, even though Layton's soprano and mezzos affect a purity that sounds "boyish". Their intonation in the piquant harmonies of...