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Track(s) taken from CDA67576

Hodie Christus natus est

composer
author of text
Magnificat Antiphon on Christmas Day

St John's College Choir Cambridge, David Hill (conductor)
Recording details: January 2006
St John's College Chapel, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: October 2006
Total duration: 1 minutes 7 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Polyphony, Stephen Layton (conductor)
The King's Singers
The King's Singers

Reviews

‘David Hill's Advent programme imaginatively mingles antiphons, carols, hymns and motets. Favourites alternate with relative rarities such as Edward Naylor's Vox dicentis: Clama, whose sumptuous sonorities unfold gloriously in the chapel's acoustic … the John's choir, fielding what sounds like a vintage crop of trebles, sings throughout with its trademark mixture of refinement and gutsy energy’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘This recording holds some of the most exquisite choral singing I have ever heard. They must be one of the finest choirs in England. Not only is the technical standard dazzlingly high, but the readings are engaging, animated and sensitively shaped’ (American Record Guide)

‘Blend, balance, intonation and diction are all unfailingly top-drawer, and the choir's unanimity of phrasing and dynamic shading come across as something quite special … both engineering and annotation are well up to the same standard’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘This is a very fine disc indeed … the overall impression with which I’m left is one of great satisfaction and pleasure. The programme has been assembled with great imagination and the execution is well nigh flawless. When one adds in excellent and very atmospheric sound, first rate notes and texts and translations, it all adds up to a very distinguished package indeed. I shall be surprised if I encounter a finer CD of Christmas music this year’ (MusicWeb International)
Hodie Christus natus est (Christ is born today) is the Magnificat antiphon for Christmas Day in the Catholic plainchant tradition, and is famously included as the start and end of Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. The original plainchant melody first appears in a Swiss manuscript from c990AD, but it had likely been in circulation for a long time by then.

from notes by The King's Singers © 2021

Other albums featuring this work

Christmas Carols with The King's Singers
Studio Master: SIGCD683Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
O magnum misterium
CDA66925Download only
The King's Singers Christmas Presence
Studio Master: SIGCD497Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
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