Christmas at St John's Cambridge

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Taking as its starting point their world-famous Advent Carol Service, The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, is here on dazzling form in an imaginative and varied programme devised by David Hill.

Alongside Christmas classics by Rutter, Warlock, Howells and Holst, we have new works by Judith Bingham and Francis Pott, and Naylor’s epic Vox dicentis. Many of these works have specific connections to David Hill and his choir, and the resulting conviction of performance is a testimony to their stature.

A narrative thread is provided throughout the disc by the seven Great ‘O’ Antiphons (‘O Wisdom’, ‘O Key of David’, etc) which fall on 17 to 23 December in the liturgy. At the close David Hill’s imaginative arrangement of Bethlehem Down (combining the popular choral version with Warlock’s own accompaniment for a solo song version) leads into Morten Lauridsen’s phenomenally successful O magnum mysterium and a blaze of glory in the Christmas Day hymn O come, all ye faithful. ‘Hodie Christ natus est’ indeed.

CDA67576 73 minutes 49 seconds

‘David Hill's Advent programme imaginatively mingles antiphons, carols, hymns and motets. Favourites alternate with relative rarities such as Edward Naylor's Vox dicentis: Clama, whose sumptuou ...
‘This recording holds some of the most exquisite choral singing I have ever heard. They must be one of the finest choirs in England. Not only is the technical standard dazzlingly high, but the reading ...
‘Blend, balance, intonation and diction are all unfailingly top-drawer, and the choir's unanimity of phrasing and dynamic shading come across as something quite special … both engineering and ann ...