COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: Neos
WORKS: Traditional and New Christmas Music
PERFORMER: Henschel Quartet; Tölzer Knabenchor
CATALOGUE NO: Neos 90902
The charity SOS Children’s Villages will benefit from sales of this excellently performed CD of seasonal favourites (‘Stille Nacht’, Corelli’s Christmas Concerto et al) and four top entries in the Henschel Quartet/BBC Music Magazine competition for new Christmas pieces. These include the overall winner, ‘Carolingua’ by Derek Smith (of Malvern, England), which weaves four carols in different languages together to a harmonically adventurous accompaniment. Andy Evans’s spiky writing for quartet and voices in ‘And Mary said’ also impresses, as does the buoyant singing of the Tölzer Knabenchor members, whose performance of ‘O du Fröhliche’ is one of the programme’s highlights. Terry Blain