クリスマス・ナイト～キリストの降誕祭のためのキャロル集

ジョン・ラッター&ケンブリッジ・シンガーズ
初期の名盤「クリスマス・ナイト」が復刻!

ジョン・ラッター&ケンブリッジ・シンガーズの名盤復刻!
1985年に録音されたクリスマス・アルバムを最新リマスターで!
キャロライン・アシュトン、キャロライン・トレヴァー、マーク・パドモア、ジェラルド・フィンリーら豪華歌手陣参加!

日本でも絶大な人気を誇る、イギリスを代表する合唱界の巨匠ジョン・ラッター(1945-)。ラッターの自主レーベル「Collegium(コレギウム)」から、レーベル初期の録音の1つ、「クリスマス・ナイト」が復刻。ジョン・ラッター自身の作品とアレンジを含む、6世紀にわたる新旧22のクリスマス・キャロルを、キャロライン・アシュトン、キャロライン・トレヴァー、マーク・パドモア、ジェラルド・フィンリーらが参加するケンブリッジ・シンガーズの研ぎ澄まされた歌声と、シティ・オヴ・ロンドン・シンフォニアによる一流のサポートで録音した名盤です。優しく癒される至福のクリスマスの夜をどうぞ。
東京エムプラス

The Cambridge Singers, under the direction of conductor and composer John Rutter, are justly famous for their Christmas recordings. Other artists and ensembles make Christmas albums that have more swing, more charm, more energy -- but if you want pure, unadulterated, tear-in-the-eye Christmas Eve devotional spirit, there's nothing that compares to a Cambridge Singers album. Recognizing that fact, the group has made quite a few of them, and all are more or less interchangeable. Christmas Night is certainly as good a place to start as any; opening with a warm and slightly slower-than-usual take on the traditional German carol "In Dulci Jubilo," then proceeding through a surprisingly varied program of songs from British, Italian, American, German, and Basque sources, including the inevitable handful of pieces by Rutter himself. There are wonderful settings of the traditional "Cherry Tree Carol" (in which Mary, pregnant and craving cherries, gets a peevish response from Joseph, who suggests that whoever got her pregnant should pick cherries for her, at which point Jesus remonstrates Joseph from within the womb and commands the cherry trees to bow down for Mary so she can pick from them) and "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day," as well as a very fine Italian carol called "Once, As I Remember" and a Renaissance piece by Samuel Scheidt called "O Little One Sweet." And Rutter's tunes are, typically, ripe and fulsome and gushing in that idiosyncratically British neo-romantic way. Highly recommended. ~ Rick Anderson