The Classic Christmas Album, DG 449965 - 74 minutes

Both of these are compilations, drawn from the companies' back catalogs. The DG starts with what we might impudently call Mouret's 'Theme from Masterpiece Theater' and ends with the Hallelujah Chorus. In between is a hodge-podge of disparate items, brought together without any apparent care or taste. I'm not quite sure what the Meditation from Thais, 'See the Conquering Hero Comes', and 'Pie Jesu' from the Faure Requiem (with Kathleen Battle) have to do with Christmas, or why it was deemed appropriate to have 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' twice. We also get the two inevitable 'Ave Maria's (Studer sings Bach-Gounod; Te Kanawa, Schubert) and Pavarotti in 'O Holy Night' - really old hat. Domingo and Carreras offer songs in Spanish; there are two snippets from Nutcracker, and two traditional carols are sung, devotionally, by straitlaced boys' choirs. Bryn Terfel contributes a rather nice 'White Christmas' and one ('Die Konige') of the Cornelius Weihnachtslieder, and Jessye Norman sings Brahms's 'Geistliches Wiegenlied' in opulent tones. Those are the class acts, and they don't justify the disc. It might make an unusual ornament for my Christmas tree, but I don't want to hear it again.

The Sony collection is more interesting. The recordings date from 1907 to 1967, and from the acoustic years we get rarities by Fremstad ('Stille Nacht'), Gerhardt ('O Tannenbaum'), and the all-but-forgotten Charles Gilibert, whose 1907 'La Vierge a la Creche' was one of the first Christmas records. This is material for connoisseurs, and so are the early electrics by Fanny Elsten and Elsa Alsen. A 1925 'Adeste Fideles' sung by the Associated Glee Clubs of America must have been a sonic blockbuster in its time, and I almost wish I could hear it with innocent ears. Moving closer to the present we find such familiar singers as Eileen Farrell, Nelson Eddy, Earl Wrightson, Phyllis Curtin (not mentioned until you open the booklet), and Carol Brice. E Power Biggs plays 'Joy to the World', the Mormon Tabernacle choir offers customary fare, and George Szell leads his Cleveland Orchestra in 'Patapan'(!). From the Beers Family, who were on the mellow, wholesome fringe of the 60s folk revival, comes an altogether lovely 'Cherry Tree Carol'. I would like to have their entire album reissued, along with Farrell's (amazing how she could scale the voice down to an intimate level), both of Andre Kostelanetz's (one with Earl Wrightson, the other with the disarmingly lovely Curtin), and perhaps even Nelson Eddy's (stolid though he is). That's my only gripe about this disc: there isn't enough of it.

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