A Belfast Christmas was a hit of the 2021 Christmas season, recorded in the summer of 2021 during a pause in the depredations of the coronavirus. It's quite a fresh enterprise in several ways. The album marks the choir, in general only sparsely recorded and newly re-formed by professional singers, on the Resonus Classics label, whose engineers have gotten marvelous results in Belfast Cathedral itself; the sound has the gravity and depth appropriate to the subject matter but sacrifices nothing in terms of text ...
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A Belfast Christmas was a hit of the 2021 Christmas season, recorded in the summer of 2021 during a pause in the depredations of the coronavirus. It's quite a fresh enterprise in several ways. The album marks the choir, in general only sparsely recorded and newly re-formed by professional singers, on the Resonus Classics label, whose engineers have gotten marvelous results in Belfast Cathedral itself; the sound has the gravity and depth appropriate to the subject matter but sacrifices nothing in terms of text intelligibility and textural clarity. Of course, much of that clarity is the work of the singers and their conductor, Matthew Owens. Best of all is the program, much of it British, contemporary, and striking a nice balance between innovation and familiarity. Owens selects seven world premieres, three of them by his predecessor as Belfast music director Philip Stopford, and all are both accessible and thoughtful. The easy-on-the-ears John Rutter is present with Mary's Lullaby, but so is a setting...
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