Since the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, John Tavener's simple and powerful Song for Athene has been recorded umpteen times and has thus become an excellent standard by which to judge all the choirs who have attempted it. The version by the Choir of Kings College Cambridge is hyper-sophisticated with plenty of vibrato from the boys; the Choir of New College Oxford recording is ...
Like that of the Easter and Ascension oratorios, the music of the Christmas Oratorio was compiled mainly from Bach's secular cantatas. That said, individual texts and scores were also considerably reworked for the composer to come up with a densely argued and pristinely shaped structure which assumes the form of a six-part arch, taking the Nativity story from Birth, via ...