A Babe is Born: St Martin's Voices present Music for Christmas

It's all Christmassy: a staged Messiah, another to come next week (albeit unstated) and this ravishing collection from Sr Martin's Voices. some 18 pieces all by living composers, see female, nine male.

The opening Adam lay y-bouden is by Vicente Chavarria (boon 1988), nicely rhyticlly buoyant and earthy. In total contrast is a piece by Charlotte Baskerville (born 1994), her A tender shoot, potent in its simplicity. It is good to hear them together:

The upper voices of St Martin's excel in Becky McGlade's take on O come, O come, Emmanuel (and again, in the single-line opening to Robert Sharpe's There is no rose, plus its later stratospheric soarings), but it is one of Cecilia McDowell's finest pieces, Tota pulchra es, that really impresses. Listen to these gleaming dissonances, and how the choi maiamins the expressivity of each by is perfect tuning:

Exquisite dissonance is a feature of this disc: it reappears in more McDowell, her Make we joy now in thus fest. Elsewhere, it cn be th delicate opening, or maybe flowing, of a pice that impresses. Here's Gabriel Jackson's Christmas Eve:

I love the title of David Bednall's BC:AD - This was the moment, but the piece is pleasant rather than memorable. Esher Besweden's O magnum mysterium reveals a heartfelt response to the ancient text, though (plus the most exquisite diminuendo:

I enjoyed Grace-Evangelin Mason's The Imagined Forest at the Proms in 2021 (review); her Hodie Christus natus est is positively radiant:

The disc kew its title from Owain Park's A babe is born:

Alan Ballard's Sweet babe, sang she is the perfect complement (and what a pianissimo the choir attains here):

We head Karensa Briggs' setting of the Coventry Carol here; her media vita was on all things are quite silent, while her A tender shoot is on another Resonus Christmas disc, the lovely The Dawn of Grace. Here the equally lovely Seeking You:

But McDowell strikes again with a glorious act of storytelling in The Magi:

While James Whitbourn's Our Gold creates a held-breath moment of stasis, beautifully sustained by S Martin's Voices, Ben Ponniah's The Golden Carol offers.gently rocking sense of solace, its part-waiting expert and touching, its arrivals on octaves carefully and effectively timed:

Emily Hazrat's Coventry Carol seems to take s into the vey depths of Winter, St Martin's Voices upper-range singers cold as an icicle. It is an extraordinary sound:

Ed Newton-Rex's I heard the bells on Christmas Day offers a more buoyant ending, but it is the carols that take us to the depths of Yuletide that appeal the most here, all heard in stunning performances.

The disc is available at Amazon here.