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Superb performances which are beautifully recorded
Those of you who have ever sung in a choir, particularly around Christmas time, will be familiar with John Rutter's huge role in shaping the musical content of carol services up and down the country. He has arranged just about every carol known to man and his original Christmas compositions, as heard here on this extraordinary disc, epitomise both the joy and intense emotion that the Nine...
In an introduction to this disc of Christmas music, John Rutter tellingly commends the Christmas carol as one of the few forms that permits "serious" composers to write tunes, regardless of whatever political correctness rules the avant-garde of the day. And he's been exploiting that licence with a vengeance ever since, as a Cambridge student, he composed the jaunty little number that remains his...
"The performances are uniformly excellent; Stephen Layton and his Polyphony vocal ensemble have shown a previous affinity for Rutter's work and this effort simply reaffirms their commitment to and love for this very special music. The recording captures choir and the various orchestral forces at their best in the favourable acoustics of London's All Saints Church, Tooting…as one commentator said...
'It’s hard to imagine them better performed than by the award-winning British choir Polyphony'
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...