CD Reviews
The best CDs of the season

By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic

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The top pick of this holiday season is this ground-breaking new CD from Anonymous 4, that celestial quartet of women's voices who generally focus on a cappella music of the Middle Ages. This new disc of Celtic and British songs and carols of several eras, with exquisite harp from Andrew Lawrence-King, charts new and highly attractive territory for Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Jacqueline Horner and Johanna Maria Rose.

Among the carols: "Good People All" (often called the Wexford Carol), "I Saw Three Ships," "Cherry Tree Carol" and "The Holly and the Ivy," along with lesser-known traditional Irish, Scottish, Cornish, Welsh and English seasonal songs. More surprisingly, there are carols and other works of contemporary composers Benjamin Britten, Richard Rodney Bennett, Peter Maxwell Davies and John Tavener. These newer carols, all clearly in the spirit of their forebears, show that this musical tradition is constantly renewing itself. All the works, old and new, are sung in the seamless, effortless blend that these four singers seem to achieve as easily as breathing.

"Silver Bells," Seattle Men's Chorus (SMCHOL-03; www.seattlemenschorus.com)

This is the Yuletide disc for all you readers with the long-suffering families who are tired of carols whose names they can't pronounce. You know who you are: You want the old familiar favorites, not "Maria durch den Dornwald ging" (even though that's a very pretty one).

The Seattle Men's Chorus has one for you. Nearly every one of the 20 tracks in "Silver Bells," culled from the top favorites of the chorus' previous holiday CDs, is either one you know or one you ought to know (even if you can never remember the words to "Over the River and Through the Woods"). The few exceptions, including "Boogie-Woogie Hanukkah," are such fun that you'll be singing along before the season's over.

Conductor Dennis Coleman has trained and refined the 200 chorus members to a fare-thee-well, as fans rediscover every holiday season (the current holiday show, "Haul Out the Holly," is running through Dec. 23 at Benaroya Hall). The music-making here is both polished and spontaneous-sounding, with the SMC's famous blend and precision accuracy.

King's Singers Christmas (Signum Records, www.kingssingers.com)

The famous English close-harmony sextet returns, after a little regrouping, with its first recording in three years with a CD spanning five centuries and seven languages, from many different cultures and traditions. It's the King's Singers' first Christmas CD in a decade. (The group now consists of countertenors David Hurley and Robin Tyson, tenor Paul Phoenix, baritones Gabriel Crouch and Philip Lawson, and Stephen Connolly, bass.)

Fans will be glad to hear that the group's famous clarity and blend are as good as ever on this recording, which focuses on 24 carols ranging from "Away in a Manger" to Arvo Pärt's "Bogoroditsye Dyevo." The arrangements, always a strong King's Singers suit, are beautiful, whether they're traditional works of Praetorius or newer ones by John Rutter and Philip Lawson. One of the sextet's favorites, "You are the New Day," caps the CD in Lawson's new version for voices and string quartet, with Christmas-themed words ("Born on a New Day"). Just lovely.

J.S. Bach, "Christmas Oratorio," Netherlands Bach Society (Channel Classics, www.channelclassics.com)

Clad in a handsome burgundy-velvet slipcase, with an exquisite little hardcover book loaded with fine-art color photos and oratorio texts, this recording is a Christmas gift unto itself. Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" actually is a set of six oratorios for the Christmas season, and they were premiered in Leipzig between Christmas Day (1734) through Epiphany (1735). Some of the cantata materials were recycled from earlier secular works (celebrating, for example, princely birthdays); some were brand-new, but all bear the unmistakable stamp of Bach's genius.

The Netherlands Bach Society Choir and Orchestra, under the direction of Jos van Veldhoven, gives a lively and warm account of these scores, from the triumphant opening ("Jauchzet, frohlocket") to the final chorale. The four vocal soloists — Johannette Zomer, Annette Markert, Gerd Türk and Peter Harvey — are all first-rate baroque stylists.

"A Hanukka Celebration," Milken Jewish Archive (Naxos CD, www.naxos.com)

Tradition meets the new, in this compilation of Hanukkah songs and new settings by a long list of composers (including Samuel Adler, Michael Isaacson, Leo Low, Alexander Olshanetsky, Judith Shatin and Zavel Zilberts). It's part of the vast Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, a new series whose contributors include Seattle's Gerard Schwarz. The diversity reflected on this disc is extensive indeed, from Raymond Goldstein's "B'rakhot l'hanukka" ("Candlelighting Benedictions," beautifully sung by Cantor Simon Spiro and the Coro Hebraeico) to Adler's "To Celebrate a Miracle," a reflective but spirited instrumental work performed by the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music Wind Symphony. Other contributors include the New London Children's Choir, the Southern Chorale of the University of Southern Mississippi and the Rochester Singers.

Christmas with the Tallis Scholars (Gimell Records, www.gimell.com or www.amazon.com)

Fans of the wonderful early-music choral specialists, the Tallis Scholars, should have just enjoyed a visit of the Scholars to St. Mark's Cathedral last Friday. With this double-disc set, you can extend that Tallis glow into the Christmas season courtesy of the definitive holiday collection by director Peter Phillips and his singers.

It's a choice assortment, too, starting out with three of the best-known medieval carols (including a great, subtle reading of "There is No Rose") and moving on to two takes on the Coventry Carol. A set of varied "Ave Marias" and classic early-German carols is followed by Flemish carols, and finally by "Chant from Salisbury" and "Tudor Polyphony" sections that offer Christmas hymns and the "Missa Puer Natus est Nobis" of the group's namesake, Thomas Tallis.

The blend is celestial; the clarity, diction and precision of the singing are remarkable. Guaranteed to get you out of the holiday rat race and into a more contemplative, serene place.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com

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