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MauritiusToday.com - Shopping Mall - The Holly and the Ivy: Carols from Clare College
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List Price: $9.98
Our Price: $8.99
Your Save: $ 0.99 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks
Manufacturer: Decca
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028942550025
Label: Decca
Manufacturer: Decca
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Decca
Release Date: 1990-05-30
Studio: Decca
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Editorial Reviews:
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Initially released in 1979, this album built on the success of the legendary Carols for Choirs volumes in establishing John Rutter's name with the wider public, and it gave a strong hint that he was more than just a talented composer-arranger. As the many subsequent releases on the Collegium label have also shown, Rutter is a deeply sensitive and musical conductor, alive to the color of words, always allowing phrases to breathe naturally. The accomplished Clare College Choir features male and female voices, the latter providing a more rounded alternative to those world-famous neighbors in Cambridge. Included are many of Rutter's own easy-listening carol arrangements ("King Jesus Hath a Garden" and "Wexford Carol," for example), plus others by the likes of Vaughan Williams and David Willcocks, while "Donkey Carol" and "Mary's Lullaby" are quintessential Rutter originals. Only a few numbers can be classed (statistically) as all-time Christmas faves--the likes of "The Holly and the Ivy" and "Ding Dong Merrily on High"--but this needn't deter anyone from snapping up what is the perfect album to accompany Christmas pud mixing (preferably by candlelight, imagining the twilight scene in Ely Cathedral's Lady Chapel, whose glorious acoustic graces the sound). --Andrew Green
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: more excellent Christmas listening
Comment: I bought this CD as a replacement for the old vinyl recording I got years ago. This is one of my favorite Christmas albums. If you like John Rutter and his choral Christmas works, then you will want to own this CD. There are newer recordings since this was originally recorded (and I have them, too), but this was one of the first ones that I heard and it has sentimental value. And, once again, Amazon's price is the best.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pure joy
Comment: Whatever tensions you may have this Christmas, they will begin to melt away when you hear this music. I find myself thinking about this CD throughout the year; I don't know any other piece of music that does that to me. The songs go from reflective to joyful. As a matter of fact, my parakeets burst into song themselves when they hear, "King Jesus hath a garden" and "Donkey Carol". Careful listeners can hear a donkey bray during the Donkey Carol -- great fun. John Rutter and the Clare College Choir have given us a sterling musical gift.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sure to Spread Some Joy
Comment: I have just recently started to explore the world of choral music and I am so glad to have purchased this CD. To use an old-fashioned term, it is truly delightful. The song 'Donkey Carol' is my favorite and it is sure to bring a smile to the face of even the most misanthropic scrooge.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply gorgeous
Comment: I bought this album through Columbia mail order, and it instantly became one of my favorite CDs in my collection of over 2000. When it was scratched beyond playability, I immediately re-purchased it. I have almost everything else John Rutter has put out, as well as the Dale Warland singers from the US.
The music is simply ethereal, and the songs are not the overplayed tunes we hear over and over and over.
My two complaints with the album are that some of the tracks are hard to hear because the singing is so quiet and the sound level is uneven between tracks, and some of the tracks have Rutter's cutesy, saccharine arrangements drowning out the singing (Donkey Carol is the protoypical, and one I frequently skip).
However, the album is so beautiful otherwise, with the Wexford Carol, and the nearly inaudible Jesus Christ The Apple Tree, and several other tracks, that I still have to give it a 5 star rating.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Angelic Music
Comment: Lovely. So classic and ethereal. Perfect with Christmas dinner, or quiet card games by the fire.
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