This recording gathers together three ‘musical fables’ that I wrote at different times, with children—and eavesdropping adults—especially in mind. The Reluctant Dragon and The Wind in the Willows, both adapted by David Grant from Kenneth Grahame stories, were commissioned for Christmas concerts given by the King’s Singers and the City of London Sinfonia; The Reluctant Dragon was premièred in 1978, The Wind in the Willows in 1981. Brother Heinrich’s Christmas followed in 1982, written for a Christmas TV ‘special’ from Salisbury Cathedral. The story as well as the music is my own, built around the legend that the lovely carol In dulci jubilo was first sung by angels who miraculously appeared to the medieval monk Heinrich Suso one Christmas Eve.

I look back on these three children’s projects with particular fondness and pleasure, not least because of the marvellous performers involved in them: two most distinguished narrators, Richard Baker and Brian Kay; the versatile and ever-brilliant King’s Singers (friends of mine since they first got together in far-off Cambridge days); another Cambridge friend, Richard Hickox, and his City of London Sinfonia that I have worked with on so many happy occasions; and, of course, the Cambridge Singers, who have sung with me on almost every Collegium recording.

John Rutter © 1991