Customer Reviews

What Child Is This?

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Like many organists, I get quite jaded about the "heavily used" old favorite Christmas tunes. I've heard the "same old same old" too much. Only the best work of King's College, Cambridge can bring that off and leave me wanting more. (On the other hand, note that they commission new music every year for their Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols!)

Paul Halley was for many years organist-choirmaster at St. John the Divine in New York City, but also, unusually enough, was the main keyboardist for the Paul Winter Consort. In a great many Paul Winter recordings, it is Paul Halley you hear giving that luscious organ underpinning to many of their pieces, often studio-mixed rather than live combinations, and this allows Paul to be heard on piano and organ on the same piece. (That would have been physically impossible at St. John the Divine.)

This is an attractive, enjoyable CD! Paul's style seems to lean toward the mellow, warm harmonies that he contributed for so many years to Paul Winter, and that flavor translates well to the choir and organ pieces featured here. Wisely, he mixes in a few settings of Christmas songs by others, but it's predominantly his own work. If listening to all of this in one sitting, it's a little bit cloying - too much of the same general flavor, but in more moderate doses, it's really quite lovely, and certainly a breath of fresh air in the vast collection of Christmas recordings out there! I'll site a particular favorite track here. He offers two settings of the Irish carol (with Latin words), "Angelus ad virginem," a beguiling, catchy tune in a jig rhythm, mostly. It is represented thus in Andrew Carter's setting, but immediately before that, the melody and text are presented in Halley's own setting, on the same notes but as a chant (all note values essentially even) with slow, lush chords on the organ. The effect is hauntingly beautiful, and hearing one after the other works beautifully.

It's a delightful recording, but have some contrasting Christmas recordings handy when you listen to it so you can change the pace now and then.