In an introduction to this disc of Christmas music, John Rutter tellingly commends the Christmas carol as one of the few forms that permits "serious" composers to write tunes, regardless of whatever political correctness rules the avant-garde of the day. And he's been exploiting that licence with a vengeance ever since, as a Cambridge student, he composed the jaunty little number that remains his ...
The actress Prunella Scales is the narrator on this Naxos release which is unashamedly aimed at the children's Christmas market. Two seasonal works fill 64 minutes--Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Rimsky-Korsakov's Christmas Eve Suite. Scales is rather a plummy mother. Her elegant diction comes from a bygone dinner-party era. She sounds kind and warm but also somewhat distant as ...