The performance sounds remarkably accomplished for theoretically amateur performances. I have often remarked that the evidence of increasing technical standards isn't to be found in our major orchestras, which always attracted the best players, but rather in the second tier, youth, and school groups, who often deliver thoroughly professional results. John Nardolillo directs a confident, colorful interpretation and gets his players to respond with evident enthusiasm. The University of Kentucky Women's Choir also sounds very smooth and aptly ethereal in the second movement. The engineering perhaps could be a touch richer and more tactile, but it's perfectly fine. Impressive.

Four years ago Decca released A Leroy Anderson Christmas (type Q8305 in Search Reviews), which contains many of the same works featured on this program--performed both by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler (Sleigh Ride) and by Anderson conducting his own orchestra. Although that one is worthy for its historical aspects, this one is superior for its consistently high-quality performances, much more satisfying ambience, and first-rate sound. Highly recommended.

Another feather in the cap of Bruffy and his stunning Arizona ensemble

Choral singing doesn’t get much better than this. When it comes to purity of tone, daunting precision and superfine blend, Charles Bruffy’s remarkable Phoenix Chorale have it all – and then some!

An imaginative programme they give us, too, comprising a pleasingly varied selection of hymns to the Virgin Mary by seven composers and excavating some genuine finds along the way. I was much taken with the three exquisite Liturgical Motets by the respected Canadian (and London-born) figure Healey Willan, 40 years after his death still something of a musical legend in Toronto (where he was head of theory for nearly half a century at the Royal Conservatory).

Likewise, the four offerings by Jean Belmont Ford (b1939), Javier Busto (b1949), Stephen Paulus (b1949) and Cecilia McDowall (b1951) proclaim an instinctive understanding of the medium allied to an ability to speak to the listener directly and wholly without artifice (Paulus’s Splendid Jewel distils a shuddering beauty which never cloys and makes an absolutely ravishing curtain-raiser here). Both Britten’s A Hymn to the Virgin (a miraculous achievement for a 16-year-old) and Howells’s sublime carol-anthem A Spotless Rose come up as fresh as the day they were conceived.

The SACD layer of this hybrid release handles the not inconsiderable demands of the bass drum contribution in Belmont Ford’s Electa with particular aplomb, but whichever format you opt for Chandos's sound is truly demonstration-worthy in its breathtaking realism, naturalness of timbre and intrepid dynamic range. Don’t be put off by the comparatively ungenerous playing time: on this occasion quality most definitely triumphs over quantity! Very strongly recommended.

Light is the element that allies Kauja Saariaho to so many of her Nordic peers; that, plus related things such as fire, sky, eclipse and mirage, all of which feature as titles or subtitles in the three pieces recorded here. Musical textures that shimmer, scintillate, explode, darken and extinguish are her bridge between modernism and tradition, and potentially also the listener’s path from familiar modes of listening into her fascinating, never vulgarly gratifying, realm of sonic imagination.

These performances from the “100% Finland” festival in Paris are just about ideal as introductions to Saariaho, and self-recommendable for anyone already initiated. Two out of three are world premieres, and it will surely not be long before other soloists take up the crusade begun so valiantly by Anssi Karttunen and Karita Mattila. The two combine to magical effect in Mirage, where they jointly interpret the transformations of the woman in Mexican shaman-healer Maria Sabina’s ecstatic text (set in English). By comparison I have to confess that Notes on Light feels just a fraction long for its material; whereas Orion – inspired by the mortal and cosmic aspects of the mythological hunter – deserves to figure on any short list for orchestral masterpiece of the new millennium.

Kaleidoscopic orchestral colour, remote from human gesture and drama but rich in intellectual imagination, is a dimension in which Christoph Eschenbach excels, and demonstration recording quality of the kind Ondine supplies is the other notable ingredient in this compelling programme.

A wonderful performance, and listening to in (I found) has been a most moving experience. Critically, one must keep the experience (subjective) as distant from the relatively objective facts of the performance as possible: on this occasion I’m not sure that I can, or even want to. Certainly all the elements in this complex organization are well served. The soloists are admirable, Annette Dasch pure in tone, powerfully concentrated in style, James Taylor a tenor whose voice can respond to what is gentle and compassionate in his music as to the unsparing harshness, and Christian Gerhaher authoritative, humane and (like the others) entirely firm in his singing. The choir is fine in blend, precision and enunciation; the boys’ choir, too, ideal in its embodiment of unsanctimonious sanctity. For the chamber ensemble and full orchestra, only admiration, as for the recording’s producer and engineer who have dealt so well with the difficult task of keeping theses elements distinct and unifying them at the same time. Above all, we must honour their conductor, whose mature guidance is everywhere in evidence.

It’s the sense of unity that has distinguished this experience of the War Requiem most especially. I have never known it to move with such logic. That seems a strange word to use in the description of what was so deeply emotional, yet it’s right. For the first time the work (as I have known it) moved with the single-minded force of a geometrical theorem. Perhaps coming to it after Billy Budd made a difference: in the opening “Requiem aeternam” the orchestra lumbers, like Claggard, heavily and inexorably, to confront the light. Darkness and light, war and peace, noise and quiet are the unifying opposites throughout. The selection and sequence of Owen’s poems are so well-fitting that the line - can you call it “of argument”? – is unbroken and all goes forward to the almost painful easement of “Let us sleep now”. I don’t know whether that explains why this should have been the special achievement of this particular recording. I would, however, recommend all readers to try it for themselves