Music on CD; Carols for our time?

With the death aged 95 of Sir David Willcocks in September, carol singing is more than usually poignant. Many musicians came to their art as children through yearly carolling, singing from his 100 Carols for Choirs by street lamplight. The best of his was the “Sussex Carol” with its lightly melodious instrumental introduction, a jig from the beginning. The two-year-old label Edition Peters includes it on Carols from Royal Holloway, the university. The disc is delightful, opening with John Rutter’s harmonically imaginative arrangement of “O come, O come Emmanuel” and continuing with “Adam lay y’bounden” set simply by the once anti-establishment composer Howard Skempton, his work now in Carols for Choirs Vol. 5. Organist Thomas Trotter plays his own blue-note arrangement of Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh ride” and Timothy West and Prunella Scales, once cathedral ­chorister parents, recite seasonal poetry. Willcocks’ legacy is the compulsive instinct to refresh melody with new harmony and so engage the curiosity of the chorister classes. The Holloway disc features composers ­published by Peters Edition: Ola Gjeilo with a humming “Away in a manger” and Ben Parry with a jazz chord “Jingle bells”.

OUR   Recordings’ Let the Angels Sing, ­performed by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, includes the familiar from “Gabriel’s Message” to “Zither Carol” in piquant arrangements by conductor Michael Bojesen.

Some satisfy their curiosity by exploring and perfecting untapped repertoire. The choir Stile Antico, which grew out of the cathedral tradition, celebrates 10 years with an exquisite disc, A Wondrous Mystery, alternating Latin and German, Catholic and Lutheran Christmas music from the “ancient style” of the pre-Baroque. They sing the rhythms of Michael Praetorius’ “Ein Kind geborn” with absolute precision and the lines of Jacob Clemens non Papa’s polyphonic motet “Pastores quidnam vidistis” with the Mass based on its tune with clarity, balance and wave-like motion.

Willcocks was choirmaster of King’s College, Cambridge from 1957 until 1973, and though the present incumbent Stephen Cleobury has already been there twice as long, his predecessor’s presence is still felt in all that the choir does. Cleobury shares this sense of curiosity and adventure in the choir’s latest release, 1615: Gabrieli in Venice which, with the regal puff of His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, recreates the atmosphere of St Mark’s Basilica. In the newly reconstructed score of Giovanni Gabrieli’s “Quem vidistis pastores?”, one hears the taunting challenge in the split choir volleying chords across the stalls, a sense of excitement in the boys’ robust, straight tone and glowing wonder from the ensemble at the words “magnum mysterium” (“great mystery”)