Britten's 'Ceremony of carols'...

[pastoralguy]

Isn't it great when you hear a work that you've never heard before and it really grabs you? I heard a snippet of this on the radio over the weekend and found I had the Willcock's version with the Choir of King's College on EMI. (One of the treble soloists is James Clark who is now leader of the RSNO!)

Just a super piece.

[amateur51]

Isn't it great when you hear a work that you've never heard before and it really grabs you? I heard a snippet of this on the radio over the weekend and found I had the Willcock's version with the Choir of King's College on EMI. (One of the treble soloists is James Clark who is now leader of the RSNO!)

Just a super piece.

Lucky you pastoralguy! It's even better when you hear it in the flesh

[PJPJ]

Lucky you pastoralguy! It's even better when you hear it in the flesh

Isn't it just - quite breathtaking.

Willcocks' recording is excellent I think, but I have a special liking for the WCC's on Hyperion.

[rauschwerk]

I agree that it's an excellent piece. Wouldn't it be nice, once in a while, to hear a recording by an adult choir? It was such a choir that gave the first performance. I'm not sure that I have ever heard boys accurately negotiate the difficult triplets in Wolcum Yole.

I have just one recording which I have loved since it first appeared in the 1960s: St. Johns/Guest with Marisa Robles. Those boys produced the kind of tone which we know Britten liked.

[MickyD]

I first heard it on an agreeable Naxos CD with the New London Children's Choir under Ronald Corp - couplings are nice, too.

[mathias broucek]

Great piece with lovely words as well as music. I still get shivvers at:

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

[Mary Chambers]

the Willcock's version with the Choir of King's College on EMI. (One of the treble soloists is James Clark who is now leader of the RSNO!)

Really? Is that the James Clark who is also joint leader of the RLPO? First-rate violinist, very difficult to imagine as a boy treble! (He's a big bloke - or guy, as I suppose I should say nowadays if I'm going to use slang terms.)

Terrific piece, composed on a Swedish cargo ship crossing the Atlantic in a convoy in early 1942, as Britten and Pears returned home from America. And yes, wonderful words.