Glowing reviews from BBC Radio 3’s Record Review…

‘It’s a lovely sound.’

‘…the best of all worlds. Here we get that youthful freshness and brilliance, but also that technical security and sophistication.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard this harp part played so evocatively’

A glorious collection of Christmas music spanning over 900 years, centered around Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols – a work seen as both a signal of Britten’s turn back towards English musical and cultural traditions and as a distinctly modern composition.

Owen Rees and the Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford present this alongside works that alternate between the early 17th century – by that most prolific composer and arranger of Lutheran Christmas music, Michael Praetorius – and the present: music by Judith Weir (1984), David Blackwell (2011), Jonathan Dove (2000), Dobrinka Tabakova (2018), Toby Young (2017), and Cecilia McDowall (2007). At one point the pattern is paused to look back half a millennium further than Praetorius, with Hildegard of Bingen’s O virga ac diadema.

A CEREMONY OF CAROLS - released 16 October 2020 by Signum records

We are delighted to announce that the Choir’s latest CD, A Ceremony of Carols, was released on 16 October 2020. 

You can buy your copy online by clicking here or at Blackwells, Broad Street, Oxford. Or as a digital download