Traditions Carried on -- or Created

** “OUR FAVORITE THINGS”

Tony Bennett, Charlotte Church,

Placido Domingo, Vanessa Williams

Sony Classical

This recording is a souvenir of a concert in Vienna last Christmas, capturing four rather disparate singers in good voice and spirits. The material is as varied as the singers, although the glossy arrangements leave it all sounding much alike. Each vocalist has a solo or two, and they combine in different duets and trios, accompanied by a soft jazz quartet, children’s choir and the Vienna Symphony under Stephen Mercurio.

Freshest and best is Domingo’s lively, unexaggerated singing of Gounod’s “Jesus of Nazareth” and the traditional Spanish carol “Hacia Belen Va un Burro.” Williams gets a nice new song, “Through the Eyes of a Child,” based on Bach’s Prelude in C from “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” and the rest is about what you would expect, for better or worse. Those few exceptions aside, this is not a disc that repays close listening, but it might be nice in the background for that holiday party with your parents. John Henken

**those “UNSILENT NIGHT”

Phil Kline

Cantaloupe

Socio-aesthetics are hard to avoid in this provocative, strangely appealing experiment. New-music composer Phil Kline has been staging an odd “caroling” event in New York annually since 1992: Friends lug boomboxes around town, their sounds mixing and swirling as they circulate communally, in public. (The notion takes on a fresh intensity in the aftermath of Sept. 11.) The sonic result, in this recording based on a studio re-creation of the multiple boombox events, is a dreamy fruitcake of parts, tranquil even through its anarchy. The final track, “Angels of Avenue A,” is a mad, cathartic collision of bell sounds.

In general, converging parts and overlapping sounds--choral passages and various soothing electronic textures among them--conspire toward a sound that could be called accidental ambient music. The project can also be viewed as a metaphor for the peaceful coexistence of varied, syncopated viewpoints in a city, or a world. Josef Woodard

**** “CHRISTMAS WITH CHANTICLEER”

Chanticleer, with Dawn Upshaw

Teldec Classics

Christmas is preeminently a season for singing, and it doesn’t get much better than this. For exquisite ensemble, nuanced interpretations and sheer beauty of sound, the new Christmas package from the acclaimed male vocal group is a standout, real gold among so much holiday gloss. The 12 men also blend effortlessly with soprano Upshaw, as always a paragon of taste and clarity.

The unhackneyed material is mainly reflective, with the jaunty exceptions of a sparkling Spanish carol featuring Upshaw, the country gospel “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” and some of music director Joseph Jennings’ African American spiritual stylings. Traditions are freshened--listen to Chanticleer’s elegant ideas about “Noel nouvelet” or the harmonic anguish of Jonathan Rathbone’s setting of the Coventry Carol--and attention paid to new work as well, with two pieces by English mystic John Tavener and one by Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi. J.H.

*** CHARPENTIER

“In Nativitatem Domini Canticum,”

Messe de Minuit pour Noel,

Noels sur les Instruments

Les Arts Florissants,

William Christie, conductor

Erato

For those who missed their remarkable performances of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Christmas music in Southern California last weekend, William Christie and his period-instruments and voices ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, serve up most of the program on their latest disc. This is the second time around for “In Nativitatem Domini Canticum,” a startlingly dramatic mini-oratorio about the Nativity that they previously recorded for Harmonia Mundi in the 1980s. “In Nativitatem” is fittingly paired with the Messe de Minuit pour Noel, the Midnight Mass for Christmas, built on tunes of various carols, with four of Charpentier’s lilting instrumental noels interpolated between some of the sections. The performances are as precise and as scrupulously ornamented as you would expect from this group, if not quite as fervent in delivery as the live performances.

Richard S. Ginell

*** “THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM”

Sumi Jo, soprano

Erato

Sumi Jo brings her limpid soprano to an unhackneyed but oddly conceived holiday program. The music ranges from the Appalachian folk carol “I Wonder as I Wander” to rarities such as Scarlatti’s Christmas “Cantata Pastorale” and Christoph Bernhard’s 17th century cantata “‘Furchtet euch nicht!” The VokalEnsemble Koln, Cappella Coloniensis des WDR and various soloists also provide stylish period performances and accompaniment.

But what point is being made when Jo sings “O Holy Night” accompanied by a fortepiano dating from within one year of composer Adolphe Adam’s birth? Or having two versions of “Silent Night” (one, in German and waltz-like, for soprano, alto, choir and orchestra, and the other, in English and more like a lullaby, for soprano, violin and fortepiano)? The inclusion of the andante from Mozart’s Symphony No. 19 because of its buried allusion to a Christmas carol seems a stretch. Even Sumi Jo fans might feel confused.

Chris Pasles

**1/2 “A VERY CLASSICAL CHRISTMAS”

Sonos Handbell Ensemble,

with flutist Timothy Day

Well-Tempered Productions

The handbell faithful--you know who you are--have reason to rejoice over this disc. The ringing of the Bay Area-based Sonos Ensemble is astonishingly even and balanced, and varied in color and articulation. If you are outside the circle, understand that there is a whole lot of treble pinging going on. Handbells are exceedingly difficult to record, and this is a typically bright tintinnabulation, opting for clarity over warmth.

If you are not a true believer, the repertory can have some unintentionally comic consequences, arrangements from “The Nutcracker” and “Messiah” sounding very close to parody. For anyone, though, the joy of the playing should be obvious. The “Messiah” arias are particularly effective, with Timothy Day’s supple flute taking the lead over articulate bell accompaniment. Day also delivers a buoyant Badinerie from Bach’s orchestral Suite No. 2. But others of the little pieces here are less felicitous, including a Bach/Gounod “Ave Maria” with no definition to the accompaniment. J.H.

***1/2 “A VENETIAN CHRISTMAS”

Gabrielli Consort & Players;

Paul McCreesh, conductor

Archiv

“Hear, O ye princes/Our Saviour is born.” With this, Giovanni Gabrielli calls the Doge and Venetian nobility to Christmas Mass in the Basilica of St. Mark’s at the end of the 16th century. This disc gives us some idea of what it all sounded like: the radiant brass placed here and there in antiphonal splendor, the chanting, the organ improvisations, the sweet-toned Mass by Cipriano De Rore sung as more than 1,500 massive candles were lighted one by one at sunset. The best came last, as midnight approached, with a dazzling 14-part Gabrielli motet. Paul McCreesh has made a specialty of re-creating Baroque Christmas services, and he does so here with his typically fetishistic verve. Not exactly like being there, but the best we can do without a time machine.

Mark Swed