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Buffalo News
By LAURI GITHENS
12/2/2001 (Excerpts) Best-Loved Christmas Carols
and American Christmas Classics, both from Sony's "American Christmas Classics" (Sony) • 3 CDs featuring 47 tracks • Accompanying illustrated coffee-table book on the history of each carol and song• Nostalgic Christmas art and illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s. This package comes quite close to being the ne-plus-ultra of Christmas song collections, if for no other reason than it contains the holiday standard by which all others should be judged: Goulet's cocktail-smooth "A Christmas Waltz" (notably missing duet vocals with ex-wife Carol Lawrence, which may upset purists; on the other hand, this version ends with Goulet fairly nuzzling the microphone with a murmured "Merry Christmas!," enabling you to serve it with biscuits and fruit after coffee, as pure cheese). This number all but ends the entire 47-song package, and by then, you're in a place of emotional wipeout, having heard almost every song you could possibly want, and probably a few you didn't - but those are blessedly few.• CD No. 1 begins gorgeously with the lilting "Shepherd's Carol" by the Cathedral Choir of St. John the Divine - a fitting beginning for a CD that is mostly traditional, religious fare, done with spare reverence by well-known choirs and vocalists. "Mary had a Baby" by the Riverside Choir, "We Three Kings" by Robert Shaw and "Go Tell it on the Mountain" by the Westminster Choir all ring out crisply, the basses smooth and the sopranos clear and thrilling. The final two numbers, "The Shepherd's Story," majestically performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and "Caroling, Caroling/Carol, Brothers, Carol," by the indomitable Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, are enough to make you too weak with emotion to even address a Christmas card.• CD No. 2 departs from liturgical numbers, but slowly. The first four songs are a seamless pleasure, from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's mighty "Carol of the Bells" to the Mariners' prayerful "Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head," which segues into the richly exultant Mahalia Jackson number we already mentioned, during which we recommend that you just sit and listen. From here on, CD No. 2 gets sort of sprightly, punching out one classic tune after another: "The Little Drummer Boy," "Do You Hear What I Hear?," "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and "Winter Wonderland," rendered by equally classic vocalists - Burl Ives, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis and, of course, der Bingle's "White Christmas." By the time it wraps up with Andy Williams' "I'll Be Home for Christmas," you may be baking with one hand and calling up long-estranged family members with the other. Isn't that what Christmas music is for?• CD No. 3 is sort of a grab-bag of leftovers, but you know every one (exception: "Christmas in Killarney," Bing Crosby's attempt to be gaily Gaelic, isn't exactly standard fare on WJYE on Christmas Eve, but it's here nonetheless) - and more than that, you love them all over again when you hear these versions, some new, some tried-and-true. Nat "King" Cole steps in with "The Christmas Song," Gene Autry's "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is back again with "Silver Bells." It ends with "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" by Johnny Mathis, a fitting and sweet reminder that more joy - and, of course, more meade - lie ahead with 2002.At the end of that year, more Christmas collections will doubtlessly come out. But they'll have a hard time beating this one.• • • Vol. 2 "Best Loved Christmas Carols" (Sony) • One disc featuring 25 selections with accompanying color book. If you're like me, with each passing Christmas, you get more and more emotional. There are more memories to recall, more humbling lessons to reflect upon and more little faces to love. So believe me when I tell you that every year, I listen to Christmas music with a heart that is all the way open - willing to hear and willing to be moved. And if you're at all like this, you will want this CD. It's virtually all traditional and liturgical music - "Away in a Manger," "The Holly and the Ivy," "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," "What Child Is This?" and 21 more. It's performed by various massive choirs - the Mormon Tabernacle, the Cathedral Singers, the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers, the Vienna Boys Choir, the Harvard Glee Club. And there isn't a bum number in the bunch. I could wax on and on, and use words like "grand" and "glorious" and "majestic." But the song titles and artists speak for themselves. If you've been looking for one of those beautiful, soaring Christmas collections to put on while the snow falls, look no further. For
information: http://www.christmasclassics.com |