Reviewed by Steven Whitehead

While carols from King's College, Cambridge is a staple of many listeners' Christmas the advent service from the neighbouring St John's is in its way almost as popular and is indeed regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3. This disc is a compilation of live recordings by the choir from the services of 2014 to 2017 and it is to Director Andrew Nethsingha's credit that the quality of singing is uniformly excellent across the four years despite the inevitable changes in personnel and the BBC producers and engineers deserve as much praise for the splendid audio quality - at no point did I notice anything untoward that might distract our enjoyment. The programme of an advent service can be more flexible than that of Christmas as the liturgy looks not only at the advent of the Christ child but also his forerunner, John the Baptist as well as the final return of the Lord at the last judgment. However, the selected music here all comes under the general heading of "Christmas-y" taking us back to Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's "Fuit homo missus a Deo" ("There was a man sent from God", the man being John the Baptist as recorded by a different St John in his Gospel) and, on the same subject, Orlando Gibbons' "This Is The Record Of John". There are a dozen living composers represented, often looking back to traditional medieval texts including Ian Shaw's settings of "Adam Lay Ybounden" and "I Sing Of A Maiden" (both premiere recordings) and we have other premieres from Malcolm Archer, James Long and Tim Watts. All are worth hearing but whether they will make their way into the standard repertoire only time will tell. There are enough old favourites to help us get our bearings, from the opening "A Hymn Of St Columba" by Benjamin Britten to David Willcocks' setting of "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day" (an interesting comparison to the version by James Burton also included) and whether your preference is for ancient or modern you will find much to enjoy on this well presented collection.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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