This new holiday season has brought with it some smartly programmed Christmas choral recordings, including this one that combines The City of London Choir, soloists, organ, and the Bournemouth Symphony in both familiar works (Herbert Howells' A spotless Rose and Here is the little door; John Gardner's Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; John Rutter's What sweeter music; John Joubert's There is no rose) with those we just don't hear often enough. Among the latter are three extended pieces, Holst's Christmas Day--a festive and cleverly structured joining of several carols with its central theme, Good Christian men, rejoice; Finzi's In terra pax--a 16-minute setting of texts from poet Robert Bridges and from the gospel of St. Luke, its pleasingly meandering, engagingly tuneful, colorfully orchestrated style (with occasional big, dramatic outbursts) making for an evocative tone painting of "A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining..."; and from Kenneth Leighton, not his well-loved Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child, but the longer and very challenging A hymn of the Nativity, which shows impressive virtuosity from the choir. It's also a pleasure to hear Peter Warlock's delightful little gem, Tyrley, tyrlow, as well as the more often-performed Balulalow.

Baritone Roderick Williams and soprano Julia Doyle are ideal soloists in the Finzi, but Williams stands out for his warm, lyrical tone, fluid, natural phrasing, and affecting expression. He's a very gifted interpreter whose discs of Finzi songs (type Q8992 in Search Reviews) and "Children's" songs (type Q10690) are well worth checking out. Doyle's opening to the Leighton and subsequent interaction with the choir in this difficult a cappella work is very well done, as is the substantial contribution from the orchestra. Conductor Hilary Davan Wetton has a cool and perfectly judged sense of both the celebratory and the serene, important in realizing the variety of mood and complexity in these 20th-century works. I had a little trouble with the extremely slight intonation discrepancy between choir and organ in Rutter's What sweeter music, which must have been a function of the particular acoustic space--a different venue from most of the other selections. Some listeners will notice; others won't.

The program ends in grand style with Vaughan Williams' God bless the Master (the last of his set of four "Winter" songs from his Folk songs of the four seasons. You can't help but be caught up in the joyful spirit that's apparent throughout all the performances on this disc, from the soloists and accompanists to the choir and orchestra. And while that alone is reason enough to own this, you really shouldn't miss the Leighton or the very rarely-recorded In terra pax, in this now-reference version of the work.

Any instrument is fair game for inclusion in the ever-emerging world of electro-acoustical and computer music, but the saxophone would seem to have a special place. Born out of developing technology itself in the late 19th century, with a tone that has never been a rooted in one musical style, it is ideal for sonic exploration. And as this disc shows, contemporary composers have certainly responded to it. It opens with Morton Subotnik's seminal In Two Worlds, an early classic first recorded in 1988 but lost due to software issues. Fancher's silvery timbre floats in almost Gymnopédie fashion above the interactive accompaniment in the opening and then dances with it compellingly to the end. Worth the disc alone to hear this history given new life.

Judith Shatin's Penelope is a compelling piece of musique concrète using the sound and rhythm of a weaver’s loom to tell the story of Odysseus through his wife’s view. John Anthony Lennon’s Aeterna uses (relatively) simple echo effects to do some marvelous sonic weaving of its own, again with Francher making it work with precise and smooth playing. She soars in Reginald Bain’s Jovian Images above a sci-fi atmosphere “inspired by the sounds of the Jovian planets”, and jams through the highly interactive and textually complex SaxMax and James Paul Sain’s Slammed. The stringent “constraints” imposed by composer Edmund Campion’s Corail may be the most difficult for Francher to navigate, but the result is still intriguing. In all, a recording with performing artistry to match the compositional daring.

The music of Swiss composer Carl Rütti seems to have gained considerable ground in the repertoires of British and American choirs in recent years, and this setting of the Requiem shows just why. He has a gift for finding a memorable “hook” to trigger a section – and, in this case, the entire work, which begins with a haunting soprano solo, beautifully sung by Olivia Robinson – and a clear connection to the English choral tradition (he studied in London, in fact). The orchestration is the same as that of the Fauré Requiem, and that is not the only resemblance between the two works: there is frequently a wistful gentleness here that any admirer of the French composer’s work will respond to. Rütti also does not, of course, include the “Dies irae”, but does set the “In Paradisum”.

While gentleness is far from being the end of the story, however, as the Elgar-meets-John Adams style of the opening of the Kyrie, for example, or the Nymanesque moments of the “In Paradisum” demonstrate, the tone is definitely predominantly elegiac and consoling. The Bach Choir under David Hill respond to this warmth and passion, and soloists Olivia Robinson and Edward Price are outstanding, but I wonder how well the work would fare with less competent performers: the sense of pulsing urgency present here is definitely necessary to hold the work together. The recording, made in St. John’s, Smith Square, is wonderful, responding to the wide sonic and dynamic range of the music in every detail.