It’s that time of year… A thoughtful yet enchanting album of 20th- and 21st-century Christmas carols from The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge and director Steven Grahl affirms this most vibrant of seasonal traditions.
Particularly welcome is an emphasis on recent and contemporary women composers from across the choral world, including Florence Price, Sally Beamish, Elizabeth Poston, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Lucy Walker and Errollyn Wallen, whose music dovetails with that of John Rutter, Herbert Howells, Gustav Holst, Piers Connor Kennedy and Kenneth Leighton.
Those newer carols sit among familiar old friends such as ‘Stille Nacht’, ‘Carol of the Bells’ and ‘In dulci jubilo’.
A modern folk classic is found in ‘The truth from above’, which Vaughan Williams transcribed directly from a melody sung to him by a local farmworker as he wandered the England looking for the nation’s lost melodies.
A similar story from the other side of the Atlantic pertains to the delicate tune of ‘I wonder as I wander’, which came to the world’s attention via a collector of folk songs in the Appalachian mountains.
Ranked by Gramophone as among the top five choirs in the world, The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge has long been seen as the finest of the world’s mixed-voice student ensembles. Their most recent album of Finzi choral music (released June 2026) was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone.
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