Compared to Christmas, Advent, the first season in the Church year, has inspired a relatively small body of music, which, with a few famous exceptions, tends to get overlooked, so it's nice to have a CD entirely devoted to Advent music.
Winchester Cathedral Choir, a men and boys ensemble conducted by Andrew Lumsden, with organist
Sarah Baldock, present an attractive program of music, from the very old to the very new, consisting of a cappella and accompanied choral pieces interspersed with chorale preludes for organ by Bach and Brahms. The choir is disciplined and sings with a good blend and a musicality and restraint appropriate for this repertoire, but it lacks the sheen and polish characteristic of the very best English men and boys choirs. That being said, the performances are very fine, and in the case of the chromatically treacherous pieces like the
James MacMillan, impressively virtuosic. The choir excels in music from the English choral tradition, such as the pieces by Byrd, Weelkes, Howells, Naylor, and Stanford. Lumsden's and
Baldock's organ solos are highlights, played with sensitivity and grace. The sound of the album, recorded in the Cathedral, is a little woolly, without the clarity that's ideal for the more contrapuntal pieces.