Par TEMPERLEY N.. Both a dedicated carol singer and an authority on the history of English music, Nicholas Temperley here offers a unique book of 37 carols dating from the fifteenth century to the present. For over fifty years he has sung, edited and composed carols each Christmas, and in Christmas is Coming the fruit of his enthusiasm is combined with his wealth of knowledge to produce an outstanding and original new collection. As John Rutter observes in his Foreword, the book does not pointlessly duplicate what can be found in many other carol books, but has a personality and purpose of its own. Twenty-two fresh and practical arrangements include carols from Austria, France, Germany, Mexico, Poland and the USA, alongside music both rare and familiar from the rich heritage of the English carol tradition. As well as eight of his personal favourites, from J. S. Bach to Charles Ives, the author includes seven new compositions of his own, settings of medieval and traditional texts that reveal his skill as a choral composer whose command of style ranges from the humorous to the profound. In addition to sample programmes and translations, there are invaluable notes on the performance and history of individual items, plus an historical summary of the genre as a whole: everything in fact to make Christmas is Coming an indispensable companion for singers who wish to enrich the seasonal repertoire for concerts, churches and traditional Yuletide carolling./ Recueil / Chorale

Par BENJAMIN GEORGE. A beguiling 20-minute work for countertenor, women's voices and orchestra, Dream of the Song, George Benjamin's first work since his ground-breaking opera Written on Skin, was premiered in 2015 by the countertenor Bejun Mehta, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by the composer. Employing a reduced orchestra (two oboes, four horns, two percussionists and two harps and strings), the work sets verse by three major poets who spent formative years in Granada- two Hebrew poets of mid-11th century, Samuel HaNagid and Solomon Ibn Gabirol (sung by solo countertenor in English versions by Peter Cole), and Gabriel Garcia Lorca (sung by the female chorus in the original Spanish). This inspired pairing of texts creates a rich, melancholy and strange poetic conjunction, expressed most beautifully in the final movement which, overlaying soloist and choir, offers two simultaneous visions of dawn, conceived a millennium apart./ Répertoire / Choeur