2024: Working List of New Classical and Choral Christmas and Hanukkah Recordings

 

2024: Working List of New Classical and Choral Christmas and Hanukkah Recordings

Compiled by R. Rojas

Updated: September 29, 2024

The descriptions below are those of record labels or the ensembles, and are not reviews by the Christmas Carols Blog. Some have been altered for better web viewing. Don't fret, we left the King's English intact. Links to the ensemble or record label have been included to make purchasing easier. We will be adding some link where they have been left off, as well as adding tracks, as we get the information. If we missed your new recording, email us at: christmascarolblog@gmail.com.

Britten - Missa Brevis - Ceremony of Carols and Williams - Mass

Aulos Media

This is the first recording of music from Ripon Cathedral under their present director of music, Ronny Krippner.

It is a lovely collection of popular carols which this newly assembled choir perform admirably.

https://www.prioryrecords.co.uk/Ripon-Cathedral-Choir-Krippner-Carols

Following their first successful album on Signum Records, the Bevan Family Consort present a collection of Christmas Carols and compositions for Advent. The collection includes familiar works such as Darke’s setting of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, which is presented here in a new arrangement by Francis Bevan and was as works newly transcribed for this album such as Palestrina’s ‘Missa sine nominee a5’ and Weelkes ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’. ‘Lute-book lullaby’ also features, composed by original Bevan Family Choir founder David Bevan.

1 Alleluia. Veni Domine noli tardare
2 Rorate cæli (Transcr. Francis Bevan)
3 In the Bleak Midwinter (Arr. Francis Bevan)
4 Missa sine nomine a5 (Transcr. Francis Bevan): Kyrie
5 The Holly and the Ivy (Arr. H. Walford Davies)
6 Missa sine nomine a5 (Transcr. Francis Bevan): Gloria
7 There is a Flower
8 Missa sine nomine a5 (Transcr. Francis Bevan): Credo
9 The Holy Boy
10 Missa sine nomine a5 (Transcr. Francis Bevan): Sanctus
11 Gloria in excelsis Deo (Transcr. Francis Bevan)
12 Missa sine nomine a5 (Transcr. Francis Bevan): Agnus Dei
13 There is no rose
14 Ave Maria … virgo serena
15 Lute-book Lullaby
16 Benedicamus Domino
17 The Virgin Unspotted
18 Here is the Little Door
19 O magnum mysterium (Transcr. Francis Bevan)
20 Jesu dulcis memoria

Christmas with the Bevan Family Consort - Signum Records

The Choir of King’s College London follow up on their first recording of Edward Nesbit’s sacred choral music, named a Gramophone Editor’s Choice in 2022, with Nativity, a programme of Christmas music written by the composer over the last ten years: a joyful celebration that places Nesbit at the heart of a thriving British choral scene.


At the heart – but slightly to one side too. In a crowded field, Nesbit’s voice is distinctive. Expect much more fast-paced music than is the norm, an abundance of musical references to the classical canon, and frequent touches of humour. With their young, zestful performances, Nesbit’s music benefits from his close collaboration with the choir and its director Joseph Fort.

https://www.delphianrecords.com/products/edward-nesbit-nativity

GLOBAL RELEASE DATE: 29 NOVEMBER 2024

Long associated with the music of Gabriel Jackson, in 2020 the Choir of Merton College, Oxford and their director Benjamin Nicholas won a BBC Music Magazine Award for their recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, a work which grounded its narrative of Christ’s suffering and humanity’s redemption in texts associated with the history of the College.

The Christmas Story, again with a libretto assembled by the College’s chaplain the Revd Dr Simon Jones, takes the same approach to tell the story of Christ’s birth. Spanning the period from Advent to Candlemas, it mixes biblical narrative with liturgical texts and four specially commissioned poems by members of the College.

The new poems are given to the College’s girl choristers (an independent part of its choral foundation since 2016), while the main body of the work is carried by the full choir and by an ensemble of flute, percussion, strings, saxophone and three trombones – the latter recalling the hieratic sonorities of the seventeenth-century works by Schütz and others which Jackson had in mind while composing The Christmas Story.

GLOBAL RELEASE DATE:
8 NOVEMBER 2024
https://www.delphianrecords.com/products/gabriel-jackson-the-christmas-story

We are thrilled to present this CD of music by Liz Dilnot Johnson in her 60th birthday year. We have loved working closely with Liz for several years, as she explains in the booklet:

“This album celebrates my creative relationship with Ex Cathedra over the last nine years and as [a] composer-in-residence since 2021. The recording was made in three intense days at the Bradshaw Hall (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire), the warm but clearly defined acoustic revealing the choir’s exceptional vocal skills.

“The first eight tracks span nearly forty years of my composing life, up to A Wild Midwinter Carol [2022] – the first of my new set of ‘eco-songs’. The second half of the album presents When A Child Is A Witness – requiem for refugees – one of the largest and most ambitious collaborations with Ex Cathedra so far, and winner of an Ivors Composer Award 2022.”

Editors notes: This album includes four Christmas tracks:

For This Babe

Magi

Gentle Flame

A wild midwinter carol

Blake Reimagined (a la Christmas according to the composer)

Christmas Carols Blog: Our thanks to the composer for informing us of the Christmas pieces on this album.

https://excathedra.co.uk/recordings/johnson-gentle-flame/

Following on from the critically acclaimed Anthems, Hymns and Gloria (8.574130) released in 2020, Nicholas Childs and the Black Dyke Band return to the music of John Rutter with this album of Christmas carols arranged for brass. 

The Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus is also featured on O Clap Your Hands, Nativity Carol and Te Deum. Includes twelve world premiere recordings.

• Release Date: 8th Nov 2024

The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square are joined by award winning Indian American actor and singer Michael Maliakel (star of Disney's Aladdin on Broadway), and Lesley Nicol (known for role as Mrs. Patmore in Downton Abbey), to present a gorgeous collection of beloved Christmas songs as well as a reading of the Christmas story in Luke 2. Recorded live in 2023 in the Conference Center at Salt Lake City UT, for a collective audience of roughly 60,000.

‘Like to a flower’ is the second album dedicated to the music of Annabel Rooney, following the success of ‘As a seed bursts forth’, released in 2019. These beautiful and approachable settings of traditional texts bring a fresh and original voice to the growing repertoire of sacred choral music by female composers. The disc opens with a ‘mini’ Evensong: Introit; Preces; Psalm; Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis; Responses and Anthem, together with a Mass, anthems, and motets for all the seasons of the church’s year.

Annabel Rooney read music at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and continued her studies in Cambridge with postgraduate research on eighteenth-century opera. Rooney turned to composition comparatively late, when her youngest child was starting school, mostly writing choral music.

Her music has been performed by many choirs in the UK and overseas, including Exeter and Ely Cathedrals, Bath Abbey, York Minster, the Chapel Royal, and King’s Voices and broadcast on Choral Evensong on Radio 3. Her music is published by Selah, and Oxford University Press, notably in the ‘Breath of Song’ anthology of music by women composers.

Compiler's note: This recording contains the winter piece "'Tis  winter now," and the Christmas piece "Love Came Down at Christmas."

https://www.regent-records.co.uk/product/like-to-a-flower-choral-music-by-annabel-rooney/

Christmas chez Liszt, imagined by one of the UK's most exciting piano virtuosos. Composed and compiled by Liszt between 1873 and 1881, the 'Christmas Tree' suite has more to offer than carol transcriptions and twinkly sketches of festive joy. It begins with one of the composer's typically free transcriptions of a plainsong Christmas hymn harmonised in the 17th century by Michael Praetorius, and takes in the procession of the Magi towards Bethlehem and a lullaby at the cradle, but also cuts away to contemporary times with a sparkling scherzo to depict the lighting of candles on the tree. 

The last four of the suite's twelve movements bear only tenuous connections to the festive season, yet they bring some of the most memorable inspirations of all: evocations of evening bells, of 'Yesteryear' in the composer's searching late style, and then Hungarian- and Polish-themed themed pieces. 

As Mark Viner remarks in his detailed booklet introduction to the album, there is nothing quite like Weihnachtsbaum even in Liszt's own prodigiously varied catalogue. It is impossible to categorise, and yet every bar sounds uniquely Lisztian. Perhaps even less familiar to most listeners, on account not least of it's sheer scale, is the vast three-part oratorio which Liszt based on the life of Christ. 

Liszt made solo-piano transcriptions of two Christmas-themed orchestral movements from the oratorio's first part, picturing in turn the Shepherds at the Manger and, once more, the 'march' of the Magi. In complement, Mark Viner presents the composer's pianistic translation of the ancient carol Christus natus est. Mark Viner's recordings for Piano Classics have attracted international acclaim. 'The melodies in his hands are not simply played, they are sung on the piano!' (Fanfare, reviewing a previous Liszt album, PCL0116). 'If Alkan could play it as Viner does here, no wonder he was the only pianist in front of whom Liszt was hesitant of playing.' (Gramophone, reviewing Viner's latest volume in his Alkan cycle, PCL10275).

Franz Liszt's Weihnachtsbaum ('Christmas Tree') is an all-embracing impression of Christmas that includes traditional carols alongside childhood and adult views of the season. 

The dark chromaticism of Die Trauergondel II is a tribute to Wagner, contrasting with the brighter range and yearning lyrical lines of the Wiegenlied. Many of these works remained unpublished in Liszt's lifetime, and are genuine rarities even today.

The resounding refrains of The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford reverberate throughout A Lullaby Carol: Christmas from Christ Church, a rich tapestry of traditional and contemporary works celebrating the choir’s musical heritage, particularly from the 20^th and 21^st centuries. 

Highlights include the melodically and rhythmically rich “Make we joy now in this fest” and “All this time” by Sir William Walton, one of Christ Church’s most famous alumni, and Simon Preston’s timeless “There is no rose”. There are also two settings by former Organists of Christ Church: Stephen Darlington’s arrangement of “Silent Night”, and his successor Steven Grahl’s setting of “O nata lux”.

WILLIAM WALTON (1902–1983)
1. Make we joy now in this fest 3.48

ELIZABETH POSTON (1905–1987)
2. Jesus Christ the Apple Tree 3.13

SIMON PRESTON (1938–2022)
3. There is no rose 3.06

GILES SWAYNE (b. 1946)
4. Magnificat 4.10

PIERS CONNOR KENNEDY (b. 1991)
5. A Spotless Rose 4.06

WILLIAM WALTON
6. All this time 1.43

JUDITH WEIR (b. 1954); arr. David Maw (b. 1967)
7. Drop down, ye heavens, from above 1.55

TRADITIONAL; arr. David Maw (b. 1967)
8. I Saw Three Ships 2.50
9. Away in a Manger 3.29

GEORGE BAKER (b. 1951)
10. Toccata-Gigue on the Sussex Carol 5.02

DAVID MAW (b. 1967)
11. Lullay, lullay, litel child 4.32

PETER WARLOCK (1894–1930)
12. Benedicamus Domino 1.31

PIERS CONNOR KENNEDY
13. little tree 2.10
words: e e cummings (1894–1962)
14. Epiphany 2.10
words: Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)

FRANZ XAVIER GRUBER (1787–1863); arr. Stephen Darlington (b. 1952)
words: Josef Mohr (1792–1848), transl. John F. Young (1820–1885)
15. Silent night! Holy night! 3.12

STEVEN GRAHL (b. 1979)
16. O nata lux 2.18

JUDITH WEIR
17. Illuminare, Jerusalem 2.23

FRANCIS POTT (b. 1957)
18. Improvisation on Adeste, fideles 6.19

SPIRITUAL; arr. Robert L. Morris (b. 1941)
19. Glory to the newborn King 2.35

PETER WARLOCK; words: Bruce Blunt (1899–1957)
20. Bethlehem Down 4.36

CHERYL FRANCES-HOAD (b. 1980)
21. Good Day, Sir Christemas! 2.12

Avie Records

https://www.avie-records.com/releases/a-lullaby-carol-christmas-at-christ-church/

The Choir of St John's College, Oxford, directed by David Bannister, sings music associated with Christmas, together with youthful work by Imogen Holst and Benjamin Britten. Looking towards the sixtieth anniversary of Elizabeth Poston's Penguin Book of Carols (1965), initially undertaken with Ralph Vaughan Williams, the recording presents music associated with these two composers and the works they edited, alongside newer pieces exemplifying and revivifying the English carol tradition.

Resonus Classics

Category: Advent & Christmas, Choral, Ensemble Pro Victoria, Rowan Williams, Toby Ward

Nowel: A Choral Journey from Advent to Christmas - Delphian Records

GLOBAL RELEASE DATE: 15 NOVEMBER 2024

Mystic Orthodox Christmas Chants from Russian and Bulgarian Monasteries.

Capriccio

This programme consisting of music for different seasons of the church year is predominantly by 21st century woman composers. The exception being Hildegard von Bingen of the 12th century. Those who are wary of "modern" choral music need not be as all these pieces are very accessible.  This is the first commercial recording by the Choir of Salford Cathedral under their director Alex Patterson.

https://www.prioryrecords.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=2405

In this contemporary reimagining of Wilhelm Müller’s poetry cycle Winterreise — most famously set by Schubert — an everyman at the end of his rope confronts his inner demons in an emotionally charged vocal tour de force. Composer Douglas J. Cuomo is known for his concert, operatic, theatrical, television, and film compositions. His music is influenced by jazz, world music, classical and popular sources, as well as his spiritual practice as a Buddhist. Along with the operas Doubt, and Arjuna’s Dilemma, he has written for the London Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony, Romero Guitar Quartet, Joe Lovano, Denyce Graves, Christine Brewer, Nels Cline, Maya Beiser and others. He composed the theme for Sex & the City and scored over 20 feature films.

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/TR%201974

We have a tradition here at Real Gone Music of releasing Christmas albums on CD every holiday season, and this year we are releasing a record that started a tradition of its own. For nearly 70 years, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir–today known as The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square–has provided the soundtrack of Christmas. The 360-person, all-volunteer choir’s lush and majestic sound is one of the most distinctive in American popular song, and that’s in no small part due to the group’s legacy of Christmas albums. That legacy, which is still going strong today, began in 1957 with the Columbia Masterworks release of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Sings Christmas Carols. 

Though the Choir made its first recordings in 1910, Christmas Carols was their first seasonal set, and quickly became a beloved perennial in the Columbia catalog. Eight years later, with stereo sound having all but taken over, the album was re-recorded, and the original disappeared…until now! Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records are proud to celebrate the season with the first-ever authorized reissue of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Sings Christmas Carols in all its gorgeous mono splendor. Christmas music has never sounded so stirring and inspirational as on this set of fifteen classic carols and hymns, backed by the monumental 11,623-pipe organ at the Salt Lake Tabernacle. 

We’ve added four rare period bonus tracks (in stereo) to this essential package. It’s all been newly remastered from the original tapes by Mike Milchner at SonicVision, and The Second Disc’s Joe Marchese has penned new liner notes exploring The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s history of Christmas music. The most wonderful time of the year has just gotten a bit more wonderful with the CD premiere of this lost classic from “America’s Choir” that’s sure to enliven your Christmas morning! 

1. Joy to the World 2. When Jesus Was a Little Child 3. Away in a Manger 4. A Boy Is Born 5. There Shall Be a Star from Jacob 6. Come, O Come, Emmanuel 7. Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains 8. O Holy Night (Cantique De Noel) 9. What Child Is This? (Greensleeves) 10. Beautiful Savior (The Crusader’s Hymn) 11. Carol of the Nativity 12. Tell Us, Shepherd Maids 13. The Holy City 14. I Heard the Bells 15. Silent Night 16. The Three Kings 17. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring 18. Hallelujah Chorus 19. For Unto Us a Child Is Born

The Ukrainian violin virtuoso Solomiya Ivakhiv presents a selection of Ukrainian Christmas carols arranged for violin and orchestra by Bohdan Kryvopust - the much-lauded composer whose works have been performed internationally. Accompanying Ivakhiv in these world premiere recordings is the Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serhii Khorovets.

Following her first album on Signum Classics, Winter Light is an album of works (complete with some world premiere recordings and new arrangements) celebrating the season of Winter, as well as Christmas and Advent by composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. The common themes linking all 18 tracks are of light triumphing over darkness, good overcoming evil and, ultimately, love conquering all. 

The first half of the album tells the Christmas story, and the second takes on a different tone; veering towards jazz and folk styles. Jo’s wish is to introduce choirs to some new Winter and Christmas-themed pieces which they might like to add to their own repertoire.

01 Advent ‘O’ Carol
02 Isaiah’s Prophecy
03 I Will Hold Him
04 O Virgo Virginum
05 Carol of the Crib
06 Winter Light
07 Jesus Christ is Born Today
08 In the Bleak Midwinter
09 Love Came Down
10 Song of the Shepherds
11 A Story of Light
12 A Present for the Future
13 The Three Wise Women
14 Hibernation (Winter Songs)
15 Reality Check (Winter Songs)
16 Presence (Winter Songs)
17 Green Christmas
18 Spring Will Come Again
19 Auld Lang Syne

Release: October 24, 2024

Winter Light - Signum Records

1 Gabriel’s Message (arr. Jim Clements)
2 Wexford Carol (arr. John Rutter)
3 Now May We Singen
4 The First Nowell (arr. Ola Gjeilo)
5 We Toast the Days

Release date: November 29, 2024

Winter Night [Digital Only] - Signum Records

Yuletide is the mid-winter period from Hannuka, through Christmas, to the celebration of Twelfth Night. From the late 1950s through the 1970s it was seemingly obligatory for all artists from Jazz to Punk to make a Christmas album. With Yuletide Treats, Duo Pleyel joins that spirit and tradition, with some of the greatest classical hits for your festive delight. Comprising keyboardists Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya and Richard Egarr, Duo Pleyel begins with three beautiful, transcendental and intimate movements from Franz Liszt's 'Christmas Tree Suite'. Then follows 'For unto us a child is born' and 'Hallelujah' from Handel's Messiah. No New Year's celebration is complete without the Strauss family's 'Blue Danube' and 'Radetzky March'. Finally, they present Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite'. All performed on a Chris Maene Straight Strung Concert Grand, this album is to be listened to at high volume with a large glass of something delicious.

Release October 2024.

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/LN%200757

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