A Christmas Playlist

Tired of the same carols on repeat? Clarissa Dunn and Cynthia Morahan asked colleagues and friends from the music community to contribute some of their favourites to a Christmas Playlist.

Simon O’Neill, Tenor

Christmas music starts early in tenor Simon O’Neill’s household during the festive season with "The Rat Pack" Christmas Album sitting alongside Bach's ‘Christmas Oratorio’ (Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale) in his playlist. Although this year Simon is on a Wagner diet ahead of a new recording he’s making of Wagner’s opera ‘Siegfried’ with Jaap van Zweden immediately after Christmas. Sounds like the O’Neill household won’t be having a ‘quiet’ Christmas this year!

Bryan Crump, RNZ National ‘Nights with Bryan Crump’

Bryan’s father Harry was a huge music lover and so the Crump household overflowed with music during the festive season. Bryan fondly recalls listening to his father’s mono recording of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ with the Huddersfield Choral Society and Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent. His favourite part is the chorus ‘For unto us a child is born’ (also NZ Opera General Director Stuart Maunder’s favourite 'Messiah' chorus).

Another work that Bryan particularly associates with Christmas is Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’, which appears at the beginning of ‘A Christmas Carol’ narrated by comedian Bernard Miles. Bryan suggests this to RNZ National’s Christmas Fairies Catriona McLeod and Katrina Batten who host Christmas morning on RNZ National.

Amalia Hall, Concert Master of Orchestra Wellington

Amalia will miss having a Kiwi Christmas this year. She's in Israel and then off overseas performing until March. Her soundtrack to Christmas travels with her though and includes ‘The Three Tenors Christmas’ album, especially their rendition of ‘O Holy Night’, which she loves, along with Hall family favourites Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and the 'Elvis Christmas Album - Natale'.

Auckland Arts Festival

The Auckland Arts Festival office has the album ‘Christmas Baroque’ in their Christmas playlist. It’s a selection of familiar and not-so-familiar works by baroque composers performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei. Marc will be conducting ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark – Film with Orchestra’ with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for the Auckland Arts Festival 2017.

David Houston, RNZ Concert Programmer

“My mother’s love of singing in those choirs became my love of singing, and of the kind of music that inspires full-body chills that can only come from the purity of human voices in perfect harmony. “

David grew up in the picturesque mill town of Elora in Canada. There’s a small Anglican church in Elora that’s produced two of Canada’s few professional choirs and the Elora Festival.

David’s mother sang for years in the Choir of St. John’s Church, Elora, and David did too before moving to New Zealand to work for RNZ Concert.  Every Christmas meant pulling out their CDs and putting them on rotation over and over again for those few minutes when they weren’t actually singing in them.

Four of David’s favourite Canadian Christmas Carols sung by the choirs from his home town: The Elora Festival Singers, and the Choir of St. John’s Church, Elora are: Canada's oldest song 'The Huron Carol', 'Hodie, Christus Natus Est' by Healey Willan, Mark Sirett's carol 'Thou Shalt Know Him' is “beauty at its simplest” and 'Ring-A the News' by Robert Evans.

And a contender for his favourite Christmas Carol of all time, Healey Willan’s 'The Three Kings', which captures the immensity of the Nativity mythology with ecstatic angelic voices crying to the Three Kings “Come in, and kiss the feet of God".

Cynthia Morahan, RNZ Concert Presenter

"When I lived in Ireland, I used to find the month of November quite difficult. Daylight saving would finish and it was like someone turning off all the lights - I never got used to sunset at 2:30pm.

I remember a friend saying (very sympathetically): “Oh, you Antipodeans… you need your light.” And she was VERY right!

But when the Christmas lights would go up across the city in early December, it gave me some respite and a wonderful feeling of hope that the intolerable darkness would soon be over – and suddenly Christmas began to make perfect sense.

I looked forward to and loved Northern Hemisphere Christmases and hearing this Wexford Carol makes me a bit homesick for them."

O Holy Night

This carol by French composer Adolphe Adam is a Christmas classic and everyone has their favourite soloist.

Patricia Hurley, Trust Administrator from the Dame Malvina Major Foundation, loves listening to Dame Malvina’s rendition during Christmas dinner preparations.

RNZ Concert Administrator Josie Bull listens to a recording of American diva Leontyne Price while wrapping Christmas presents and snacking on a Christmas mince pie with a glass of port (or two)!

Then there’s Sol3 Mio’s version, which given the trio’s popularity is guaranteed to be on repeat in households around the country.

David Morriss, RNZ Concert Presenter

“I like Christmas, really I do. Just not every year…”

One minute and twenty four seconds is about as much Christmas as RNZ Concert’s resident Scrooge David Morriss can stand this year. It’s the length of his favourite German Christmas carol ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen’ by Michael Praetorius sung by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral conducted David Hill.

Robyn Jacquiery, presenter Hymns on Sunday

‘Est ist ein Ros entsprungen’ is also one of Robyn Jacquiery’s favourites…

“I find its simple, clean lines and pleasing harmonies very satisfying. This year the British vocal ensemble Voces8 released an album called ‘Winter’, and one of the tracks was a realisation of the carol by the Swedish composer Jan Sandström. Warning bells rang. Why couldn’t people leave my favourites alone, I thought, as memories of hundreds of awful carol arrangements flooded into my head. But I was very happy to be proved wrong on this one.

Even if you’re a fan of ‘straight’ performances, do take time to have a listen to this.  It’s as though a fine gauze cloth has been carefully and respectfully draped over the music, giving it a wonderfully ethereal quality."

The whole 'Winter' album is worth a listen.

 

Anna Midgley, DMMF Trustee & Chair of the Christchurch committee

For Anna Midgley Christmas is a time for reflection. This year she’s been listening to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in her kitchen while preparing Christmas food. The Nutcracker marked her first appearance on stage aged 3 when teacher Joan Irvine in Dannevirke staged her fundraising Christmas concert – Anna still recalls the steps.

By coincidence The Dame Malvina Major Foundation in Christchurch, which has been awarding DMMF Arts Excellence Awards for the past 15 years, has supported a talented classical ballet dancer Tasman Davids who graduated from the Vaganova academy of Russian ballet and now dances at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg where the first performance of The Nutcracker took place in 1892.

Nick Tipping, Presenter "Inside Out" RNZ Concert's jazz programme

Nick has a some very eclectic choices for his Christmas Playlist partly because for the last 13 years he's played bass for Nick Tansley's Carols by Candlelight show in Wellington, and tunes like "All I Want for Christmas is You" and "Snoopy's Christmas" give him great memories of playing rock-style carols to an audience of thousands!

But Nick grew up singing in choirs and says: "There's really nothing more Christmassy than David Willcocks’ great carol arrangements. They’ve been the soundtrack to Christmas for most of my life!"

Ronan Tighe, Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra - Director of Artistic Planning

“I’m excited about my Christmas plans. I’ll be heading back to my home town, Castlebar, in the West of Ireland to have Christmas there, catching up with friends and family. It’ll be the traditional turkey and mince pies for dinner, as well as pub lunches by an open fire after the occasional bracing walk.

As I’ll be spending time in Ireland I’ll be reconnecting with some of my favourite recordings from there too, and everyone in my family loves the 2004 album from Irish folk group Planxty, 'Live from Vicar Street'. It great stuff and I’ll be listening to this on the plane home. There are some very moving songs on this album and some thrillingly virtuosic instrumental playing from these legends of Irish traditional music. The Blacksmith is a favourite track, it always makes the hair rise on the back of my neck.”

Andrew Beer, APO Concert Master

“I like to listen to Duke Ellington's arrangement of Nutcracker Suite for big band while setting up the Christmas tree!”

For Christmas in 1960 Duke Ellington and his musical partner Billy Strayhorn reimagined Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ for big band and they really made it their own. 'Sugar Rum Cherry' (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) is particularly delicious.

Soprano Anna Pierard, Creative Director of Festival Opera and trustee of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation

“Project Prima Volta (Festival Opera’s youth programme) has been singing Christmas Carols at Napier Airport in the lead up to Christmas, with songs such as ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham, which they absolutely love to sing, amongst more classical offerings.

They also performed Pentatonix’s version of ‘Silent Night’ which is unaccompanied, and very beautiful.  My favourite is Mario Lanza singing ‘O Christmas Tree’."

Clarissa Dunn, RNZ Concert Presenter

"Christmas is often a time for thinking about home and what it means to you. For me there’s one particular performance that really represents this: cellist Pablo Casals’ appearance at the 1950 Prades Festival.

The famous Spanish cellist had moved to France and had stopped performing as a protest against Franco’s regime. Friends convinced him to perform at the Prades Festival and at this performance and at every concert he gave after it he played ‘El Cant dels Ocells / Song of the Birds’, a Catalan Christmas lullaby, as a protest against the oppression of his country because it was “born in the soul of (his) people, Catalonia”. Sadly Casals didn’t live long enough to see his country liberated. 

Casals also performed ‘Song of the Birds’ in 1971 after receiving the U.N Peace Medal. Here’s that performance with a portion of his acceptance speech."

Dame Malvina Major

Christmas time is when Dame Malvina Major is able to catch her breath and relax. Although she’s retired from performing her work as a teacher, mentor and patron alone this year should induce the Oxford Dictionary to revise the meaning of the word retirement. To help her relax Dame Malvina loves listening to Sinatra’s ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’. She enjoys Sinatra’s easy way of singing and his expertise in this style.

Ryan Smith, Presenter of 'New Music Dreams' on RNZ Concert

Ryan’s ears are always on the hunt for the interesting or alternative. Lately he’s been exploring Nordic carols and come up with these beauties: ‘Eg vil lofa eina þá"(I will Praise her and Laud) by Bara Grimsdottir and ‘No koma Guds englar’ (The Angels of God), which uses the melody of a Scottish/Norwegian folk tune. Here’s an arrangement that he enjoys.

He also enjoys the lovely folky melodies and the usual beautiful simplicity you’d expect from Mr Pärt in this 'Berceuse de Noel' by Arvo Pärt

If you are looking for an antidote to the sentimentality of the season, Ryan suggests ‘Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues.

“Not a very original Xmas choice I know, but I really do love this piece of music. The melodies are fantastic and Shane McGowan’s whisky-ruined growl harmonising with Kirsty MacColl’s beautiful voice is a great mix. But mostly what I like about it is the story they tell of a couple’s pretty crappy experiences around Xmas time as their “fairytale” falls apart, all told in such colourful language.  It’s a nice contrast to a lot of the sentimental Xmas stuff out there, which doesn’t do much for me.  I also love the images the chorus always conjures up in my head of the NYPD choir, steam rising from their breaths as they sing at night on a dirty snow-covered New York street.”