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"The performances are uniformly excellent; Stephen Layton and his Polyphony vocal ensemble have shown a previous affinity for Rutter's work and this effort simply reaffirms their commitment to and love for this very special music. The recording captures choir and the various orchestral forces at their best in the favourable acoustics of London's All Saints Church, Tooting…as one commentator said...
'It’s hard to imagine them better performed than by the award-winning British choir Polyphony'
'The performances by both choir and orchestra are ideal in tone, style and accomplishment … A Christmas treat'
If audience participation muddies the join-in carols in the King’s disc, here’s something cool, poised and honed to perfection. The breathtakingly precise Polyphony under Stephen Layton sing my favourite performance of these exquisite motets. Poulenc gives us the eery depth in ‘O magnum mysterium’, the inimitable delicacy of ‘Videntes stellam’ and breaks into peals of robust joy with ‘Hodie...
'[Rutter] could not have asked for better performers'
Sublime music and a Requiem performance to die for
“Less is more”, a phrase coined by Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe, seemed an apt description for the style Stephen Layton brought to his direction of the ACO and the ACO Voices. Like van der Rohe, Layton's concerns were also with architecture, a musical one in which each detail was carefully wrought as part of a larger construction of...