Ensemble Pro Victoria Gives Christmas with "Nowel: Advent & Beyond

Ensemble Pro Victoria Gives Christmas with "Nowel: Advent & Beyond

Christmas comes in new and unexpected guises – like last leaf’s fall, in Rowan Williams’s poem Advent Calendar. 

Following three acclaimed Delphian recordings of Tudor music, Toby Ward and Ensemble Pro Victoria bring fresh, contemporary colours to the seasons of Advent and Christmas; the mood is quiet anticipation, guarded joy, sometimes even fear and uncertainty, as the Virgin – the spotless Rose at the still centre of it all – sings her son to sleep amidst death and persecution. 

Williams narrates the Nativity story, around which the choir weave Hugo Distler’s searching polyphonic variations; Piers Connor Kennedy’s "Nowel el el" for harp and just six men’s voices is an intimate companion piece – or contrast – to Britten’s famous carol cycle, and has its first recording here by the group for which it was written.

1. Advent Calendar - Piers Conner Kennedy

2-16. Seven Choral Variations from Die Weihnachtsgeschichte, Op. 10 - Hugo Disler

17-28. Noel el el - Pier Conner Kennedy

29. A spotless rose - Herbert Howells

30. O Oriens - David McGregor

31. Lulla, Lullaby - William Byrd

32. Lully, Lulla, Lullay - Philip W.J. Stanford

33. Es ist ein Ros enstsprugen - Michael Praetorius and Melchor Valpius

https://www.delphianrecords.com/products/nowel-advent-and-beyond

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