In spite of this disc’s title, Jeannette Sorrell, conductor of Cleveland’s period instruments band, Apollo’s Fire, has not set out to recreate a 17th-century vespers service.
What she offers is a two-part programme of highlights from Lutheran Advent and Christmas services.
The use of four choral groups – Apollo’s Musettes, Apollo’s Singers, the Oberlin Choristers and the Children’s Choirs of St Paul’s Church – helps generate a spirit of community celebration.
The emphasis is on real-world atmosphere rather than clinical, studio perfection, and the result has homeliness and heart, and plenty of sparkle and Monteverdian blaze, too.
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Praetorius, a giant of Protestant church music, would surely have approved.
