The Choir of St John’s College, Oxford
David Bannister Director
Resonus RES 10348
This recording is not typical of the CDs which are released at this time of year under similar titles. The choir of St John’s College, Oxford and their director David Bannister have combined to produce a sequence of Christmas music which judiciously blends well-known carols such as Gustav Holst’s ‘In the bleak midwinter’ with more unusual repertory. Particularly welcome are the items by Holst’s daughter Imogen, Nowell and Nowell, and theGloria from her Mass in A minor, a work which deserves to be much better known.
In the excellent notes contributed by Elizabeth Macfarlane and David Bannister, it is pointed out that 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth Poston’s Penguin Book of Carols. Originally intended as a revision of the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols, it has achieved an identity of its own.
Poston was extremely critical of much of the repertoire current in the mid-twentieth century and her introduction to the book contains a number of caustic comments concerning ‘poor or indifferent material, however well performed’. Her view, writing in 1965, was that very few composed carols or arrangements of existing carol melodies of the previous half century, were of ‘unquestionable worth’ and added that ‘…The ‘olde’, the counterfeit, the dreadful well-meant diminutives have no place alongside the eternal verities’.
It is against this background that this very enterprising programme has been devised. I mentioned above the inclusion of Imogen Holst’s Gloria from her Mass; equally welcome are David Bednall’s setting of the Ave Maria and the anonymous Song of the Nuns of Chester. This leavens what would otherwise be an unbroken sequence of settings of carols texts, and it is most welcome. This means that, unusually for a recording of this type, it can be heard at one sitting without experiencing the aural equivalent eating an entire box of mince pies.
The standard of performance is very accomplished with sure intonation, and very pleasing tone. The addition of a solo violin and a saxophone as well as the harp provide welcome added colours and the organ accompaniments of Christian Wilson are everything they should be: well balanced with the right amount of colour where needed. A most enjoyable disc to which one will want to return.
Review by Martyn Strachan