CD · 1 disc
Vinyl · 1 disc
Orental Echo Ensemble: Fung Ching-wan (cello); Danilo P. Delfin (trumpet); So Tak-tai, Chow Chi-chung (French horn); Benson Fan (keyboards, guitar, percussion); Ng Kwok-Kwong, Siu Sau-han, Soo Ying-yuen, Yeung Yeuk-chai (er-hu); Chan Hung-yin (di); Chan Kwok-fai, Li Wai-kwok (yang-gin); Cheng Tak-wai (sheng); Yim Man-ming (pipa); Chan Shuk-har (liu-gin).
SACD · 1 disc
Anders Miolin here expresses the universality of Christmas by selecting festive songs from across the world and creating fantasies on them.
Here he uses songs from Russia and Poland, as well as Scotland, Mexico and his native Sweden. In his adaptations he employs a wide variety of styles.
He also includes two of his own compositions: Azure Christmas is a memory of a Christmas he celebrated on Martinique, while Stellæ nocte hibernali somniantes (‘Winter Night Dreaming Stars’) catches the experience of ‘standing in the snow looking up at the clear winter sky, with all its twinkling stars dreaming on our behalf’.
21 tracks recorded in the Chapel of New College, Oxford, under the direction of Edward Higginbottom. Tracks include "Out of Your Sleep," "Wassail Carol," "A Virgin Most Pure," "Once in David's Royal City," "Sussex Carol (On Christmas Night)," "There is a Rose of Such Virtue," Alleluya, a New Work is Come on Hand," and more. (CRD)
Earlier, long before pure technical skill, creativity in improvisation was the most important measure for judging the abilities of an organist. Kay Johannsen, Kantor of the Stiftskirche Stuttgart, has a masterful command of this art, which he demonstrates here by means of international Christmas songs from many lands, including German, Great Britain, the USA, Norway, Poland and Bolivia.
