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The Review - CLASSICAL & JAZZ - with TONY KIELY
Published: 18 December 2008

Carols for a newborn King

CD REVIEW: CHRISTMAS AT KING'S
King’s College Choir

WE'VE all been there – it’s late December, and having finally grabbed an armful of presents you’re now standing in an interminable queue in some hight street store with Jimmy Durante’s Frosty the Snowman belting out at full volume over the tannoy.
The despairing looks on the faces of customers and shop staff tells it’s own story – Christmas music can be hell.
But it need not be so. For some reason the high street always seems to plump for Christmas pop instead of classic Christmas, perhaps working on the assumption that the more frenzied the music being piped into the store, the closer to barracudas in a butchers shop the customers will become.
Enter King’s College Choir to act as a soothing balm for your festively fevered brow. Their new release (on Virgin records, appropriately enough) features more than two and a half hours of classic Christmas carols by the legendary Cambridge choir.
From The Holly and the Ivy to A Child is Born in Bethlehem, and Quem pastores laudavere to In dulci jubilo, this recording is the perfect backdrop to an evening of mulled wine and mince pies.
It might not arrest your attention in the same way as, say, Gene Autry singing Rudolph the Rednosed
Reindeer, but it also won’t send you into paroxysms of angst as you’re reminded of the hour and half you spent queueing for said mince pies.
Personally, I like my Christmas music to be calming and of a slightly traditional bent. Wham! and Wizard are fine at the office knees-up, but if you want something to put you in the mood for a more meditative holiday period – as opposed to something that will bring you out in a cold sweat as you remember a few minute’s drunken canoodling with the boss – pick up a copy of Christmas at King’s.

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