Catalogue Connection: 25161

Press ‘Play’; Track One: ‘How far is it to Bethlehem?’ sings a soprano soloist. ‘Not very far’, comes the SATB response. With just a handful of singers, oboe, harp and recorder we do indeed enter a very different sound world from the Oxbridge college chapel choirs. This is a collection of carols composed by the Manchester-based recorder player John Turner. He has played with leading orchestras such as the Hallé and English Chamber Orchestra, and recorder concertos have been written for him by the likes of Kenneth Leighton, Alan Bullard and John Casken.

This CD of Turner’s compositions is a pleasing, seasonal listen. In the accompanying booklet he explains that each Christmas he would send a specially composed carol to his friends. There are 21 such works, plus one early carol and, as he puts it, an instrumental piece sent as a Christmas card one year when inspiration failed! As far as words go, there’s no shortage of source material: John Turner has tapped familiar and much-loved texts – ‘Adam lay a-bounden’, ‘I sing of a maiden’, ‘Away in a manger’ to name but three. There is some marvellous word-painting here – the rocking rhythm for example in Christmas Lullaby or the medieval vibe in Gloria Carol, a rather busy piece for SSA (published by the RSCM). Turner’s style is pleasantly melodic, though angular in places. Singers have to have their chromatic wits about them; the well-blended Intimate Voices directed by Christopher Stokes give effortless, fluent performances throughout. The CD is well recorded too.

When you see ‘Adam Lay yBounden!, ‘Lullay, my Liking, ‘Away In a Manger’ and ‘I Sing of a Maiden’ among the titles of a Christmas anthology, you figure you know what you’re in for. Not this time. Turns out that those carols and the 19 others included here are original works crafted by John Turner. One of Britain’s best recorder players, Turner has made the rounds with such ensembles as the Halle, Royal Liverpool, and English Chamber Orchestras, the English Baroque Soloists, the Academy of Ancient Music, David Munrow’s Early Music Consort and the ASMF. He has recorded the Brandenburgs five times and given the premiere performances of some 600 contemporary works for recorder—many of them composed with him in mind.

But Turner also composes and for years has been sending one original carol to his friends each Christmas. One of his colleagues (a former producer for the BBC) thought it was high time for these Christmas presents to be shared with all of us, and that turns out to have been a terrific idea. The carols combine gentle contemporary harmonies with stylistic touches redolent of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Turner has set them for recorder, harp, and an occasional oboe in support of a small complement of voices. (Intimate Voices is an SSATB solo quintet. They are joined by a third soprano from outside the group.) For all their homespun delicacy, the songs have been performed in cathedrals, minsters, and concert halls all over England. These warm, youthful voices are perfect for the music. If you’re in the market for some intimacy and charm this holiday season, look no further.
Notes, yes; texts, no.

I have included John Turner’s first name in the headnote in order to distinguish him from the three other Turners in the Fanfare Archive, none of whom are this Turner. John Turner is a British recorder player and composer (and apparently recovering attorney). Most of this collection of Christmas carols are for a cappella voices; a handful have some instrumental accompaniment (the composer himself plays recorder on the one purely instrumental piece here).

Turner has developed the habit of composing Christmas card carols for family members and friends over the years, and this is a collection of those. The writing is very accessible and tonal—at times even sounding as if written 300 years ago, though occasionally he toys with the harmonies enough to remind you that he is, in fact, a contemporary composer. But even the most conservative listener will find nothing here to object to. Will that listener find something to admire? Absolutely!

While breaking no new ground, Turner has composed delicate and attractive music that is tuneful and that has the appropriate holiday glow about it.

The performances are exquisitely lovely and the recorded sound is perfectly balanced, warm and natural. Only the omission of texts can be faulted. Even with that omission, I think this is likely to be one of the holiday season’s nicest releases.

Christmas Card Carols from Christopher Stokes and Intimate Voices on Divine Art [DDA25161] is another disc of contemporary carols, this time with a twist. All the carols on the disc are composed by the distinguished recorder player John Turner, and each was sent as an annual Christmas Card gift to friends.

There are 23 carols in all, some with just choir and some with choir and soloist, and there are instruments too. Stokes’ [sic: Turner’s] style is tonal but interesting, lyrical with harmonic twists. He has a very personal style, and successfully avoids direct influence from the more major contemporary carol writers. The texts vary between specially written ones, and familiar ones; Turner does not shy away from the familiar, there are lovely settings of Lullay, mine liking, Susanni and Away in a Manger. A disc worth exploring.

If you are a music devotee like I am, the Christmas (Holiday) Season has its ups and downs. If you think about it, there are maybe 30 carols and songs that get recycled every year in all sorts of ways. And now in the States from before Black Friday on there are increasing numbers of TV commercials that make use of the music in annoying or less annoying ways. Regardless, the sheer repetition of any number of them might start to give you brain hemorrhages or other states that have nothing to do with visions of sugar plums. Admittedly there are many songs I can hear year after year in the right versions, but over time I also have welcomed new fare, such as holiday oriented jazz, folk songs, music from other national traditions, repertoire from the Middle Ages and the entire catalog of Christmas classical possibilities.

So in that way I welcomed in the mail recently something totally new, namely John Turner’s Christmas Card Carols (Divine Art 25161). Most happily it features the strikingly sonorous vocal ensemble Intimate Voices under Christopher Stokes. They sound positively angelic here.

The premise for John Turner was to compose some 23 new carols, essentially based on familiar texts, some going back centuries. So for example we get an altogether different musical treatment of “Away in a Manger,” new yet somehow fittingly related in overall melodic thrust.

The music has a bit of contemporary harmonic spice to liven up our holiday listening punch. Yet what hits me is that the music remains strikingly in the carol tradition, sophisticated choral songs that supplement the usual diet of chestnuts (on the open fire or cracked) with well written and tuneful works that do not relate to the many popular songs that have entered the pantheon in the last 100 years. Instead these are timeless, a kind of alternate to the 400 years of Christmas season gems, as if in some parallel December season on another unknown continent a group of Euro-American-based settlers there grew another body of traditional songs.

It is welcome addition, a rich broadening of available carols, written today but with pronounced early-music-and-beyond glow suffusing the whole. The caveat to all this is that you the listener cannot casually throw this on the player and expect instant recognition. This is New Music and so you are expected to spend some time and get to know it all. It takes a little, quite pleasant work to put this music into your holiday listening block. Once you give the album a few preliminary auditions, the music will I hope seem to fit in nicely as a refreshing alternative to 50 versions of “Jingle Bells” and “Silent Night.”

Anyone of Classical choral bent will find this album refreshing and substantial. And until this music becomes part of the commercial onslaught of would-be advert jingles it is yours and yours alone to hear when you choose. It will be a while before Wal-Mart starts piping this music into their stores, if ever.

Warmly recommended as a beautifully performed set of brand new yet ageless carols! Give it your ears if it sounds like something you would get wrapped up in like a surprise gift under the tree. Your listening mind will be a new present to yourself!

This has got to be one of the coolest things: recorder player Turner writes a short Christmas carol each year and sends it to friends and family, not in the form of a recording but as notes written on a card. They’re all musicians, so they play the music for themselves.

 

One recipient writes in a review: “It is played through on the piano, sung (when no one is in the music room!) and then placed on the piano for the duration of the season.”

 

We imagine there’s a cartoon in here somewhere, rather like HM Bateman’s strip cartoon The Boy Who Breathed On The Glass At The British Museum …. “The Friend Of John Turner’s Who Cannot Play His Christmas Card.”

 

The sleeve notes reveal there’s a Congleton connection that will delight some people: Watts’ Cradle Song is dedicated to the Rev Roger Scoones, the rector of St Mary’s Church, Stockport, and a friend of Turner; he is, of course, a former incumbent at St Peter’s Church in Congleton.

 

Turner writes in the sleeve notes that he has always liked Christmas Carols, a legacy of school carol services, and has been composing them (“or rather trying to”) since his early teens.

 

They’re nearly all a capella. He wrote one short instrumental one year “when inspiration failed”.

By definition they are all short — the music had to fit on a card — and definitely sweet. It’s like having high-quality carol singers round your house; it’s also pleasingly intimate, partly because you feel like you’ve been let into a private secret (which is true to some extent) and partly because he wrote them for his friends.

Track one A Nativity Carol is the earliest, a setting of How Far Is It To Bethlehem? by Frances Chesterton, composed on Christmas Day 1967, and sung for some years by the choir of Wakefield Cathedral, to whom it is dedicated.

It’s a delightful and atmospheric programme of Christmas music that will suit that quiet time on Christmas morning before the multitudes come round for Christmas dinner.

The performers are Intimate Voices, directed by Christopher Stokes, Philippa Hyde (soprano), Eleanor Gregory (soprano), Joyce Tindsley (contralto), Matthew Minter (tenor), James Berry (bass), Richard Simpson (oboe), Anna Christensen (harp), Sasha Johnson Manning (soprano) and Turner himself (recorder).

It was recorded at St Thomas’s Church, Stockport.

Some of the best sacred music was written not to last. The Manchester-based lawyer and composer John Turner
has been sending musical Christmas cards to friends for vears, little ditties often written without anything as lofty as public performance (or even commercial recording) in mind. The result? Neat, undemonstrative and individual little carols (22 in all, with an instrumental canzonetta included too) that absolutely surpass their ‘closed circle’ origins. Highlights among Turner’s Christmas Card Carols are the beautiful Invocation to Sleep and the shapely, evocative melody of Rocking Hymn. Throughout, the vocal quintet Intimate Voices under Christopher Stokes, clearly recording on the hoof, sing with detail and reactivity.

For over fifty years, the well-known recorder player, John Turner, has composed a carol and sent the score as his Christmas card greeting. Until now these had been private gifts to his friends, but now 23 of them have been recorded for this album, released in time for Christmas.

Mr Turner is not an avant-garde composer and all of these works are very much in the English choral tradition and will provide a welcome alternative to the market cornered by the often overly sentimental works by John Rutter. Presented by the chamber choir Intimate Voices (which also performs as Voces Intimae) and featuring sopranos Sasha Johnson Manning, Eleanor Gregory and Philippa Hyde in solo and duet pieces, with obbligato harp and oboe in some; they are sensitively recorded in an excellent warm acoustic.

The pieces are settings of traditional carol lyrics, ancient texts and verses of poetry and at mainly 2 or so minutes each they never outstay their welcome. Mr Turner’s take on well-known carols are fresh and interesting in their own right and one never finds oneself comparing them with the more familiar settings. I sing of a Maiden, appears twice one from 2003 and one from 2008. His take is very different in both. The 2003 setting is for the a capella group and is chant like and sectional, while the 2008 setting is written in a simple almost medieval way but with the feeling of a lullaby as a duet for two women accompanied by harp. Away in a manger, is set as a monody for soprano and harp and in its beautiful simplicity is far more affecting than the over used version we hear too often.

There is a strong modal feel to all the settings but the Rocking Hymn dedicated to the composer Ian Parrott and his wife Jeanne has the most folk like feel. There are some delightful false relations which seem to imitate the microtonal inflections of a true folk singer. The oboist could have picked up more of the tone of the soprano here but it is a most haunting setting and at near 4 ½ minutes the longest on the disc.

There is only one wholly instrumental work on the CD the Canzonetta for tenor recorder and harp and is undated, but appeared in a year when inspiration for a vocal setting failed him. It is however in the modal style of the other works on the disc, simply a carol without words.
Most of the works on the disc are slow but the final Make we Merry from 2012 is decidedly lively and has more than a hint of Mathias’ Sir Cristemas , it even ends with a final shout form the singers.

Perhaps it is because as a recorder player he understands the use of breath, but the vocal writing is entirely idiomatic and the players seem to be actually enjoying the music. This is a most lovely disc and a most welcome addition to the Christmas market and one that would grace anyone’s household over the festive season.

John Turner is best known as a virtuoso recorder player, but he is also a composer, and for the past several decades has made it a practice to compose a Christmas carol each year and include it in the holiday cards he sends to friends and family. All of these are collected here, and performed by the Intimate Voices ensemble. The works are mostly a cappella, and consist of both fully original compositions and new settings of familiar lyrics like “Away in a Manger” and “I Sing of a Maiden.”

Turner’s writing is tonal and accessible, but often nudges the boundaries of traditional harmony in gently intriguing ways. If you’re in the market for Christmas music and want something that departs delightfully from the norm, this album would make an excellent choice.

John Turner writes: ‘I have always liked Christmas Carols…and I have been composing them…since my early teens.’ He adds that their family Christmas card used to be designed by Manchester composer Thomas Pitfield (who was also an accomplished graphic artist), however as Pitfield became infirm this practice ceased. Turner, in his turn, decided to send ‘a specially composed carol each Christmas to [his] friends.’ And this is literally the music printed on the card, with seasonal greetings!

Those listeners who have been privileged to receive one of John Turner’s ‘Christmas Card Carols’ will find this new CD a delightful surprise. When my card arrives, it is played through on the piano, sung (when no one is in the music room!) and then placed on the piano for the duration of the season. After the 12^th Night, they are carefully placed into the music filing system. I guess that I am not alone in treasuring these delightful productions.

It is not necessary to describe each carol, as the list above gives a good idea of the ground covered. Three general remarks may be of interest. John Turner has not been afraid to take well-known texts and write a new work. ‘Away in a Manger’, ‘Adam lay Ybounden’, and ‘I sing of a Maiden’ are a tribute to his imagination being inspired by the words and not being beholden to earlier efforts by other hands. Secondly, Turner’s musical style has captured the magic of the Season. There is an inherent simplicity in these settings that seems to counterpoint the immense importance of the theological revelation that Christmas gives to the world. On the other hand, Turner has not succumbed to sentimentality. Often making use of modal scales and never afraid to use a well-judged dissonance his style is quite varied. And finally, some of the carols call for instrumental accompaniment. For example, the oboe, played by Richard Simpson provides a haunting introduction to ‘Christmas Lullaby’. The harp, played by Anna Christensen, is used to good effect in ‘I sing of a maiden’ (2^nd version) and in ‘Adam lay Ybounden’. An Arabic drum finds a place in ‘The Garden of Jesus.’ Finally, as Turner suggests, his inspiration failed him, and one year the Carol was in fact a ‘Canzonetta’ for tenor recorder and harp – with no voices. It is one of the loveliest things on this disc.

However, my favourite number is the heart-achingly beautiful ‘Christmas Music’ (2016) which is a setting of a text by the composer’s friend and collaborator Andrew Mayes. It is a little masterpiece that well-deserves to become a Christmas Favourite.

The redoubtable John Turner is best-known for his remarkable recorder playing, being one of the finest instrumentalists in the world. However, he has also done much to promote music from Manchester and the North Country. The liner notes well-describe his current activities: ‘his time is spent in playing, writing, reviewing, composing and generally energising.’ Add to this list, the considerable number of CDs that feature John’s playing. He is a legend in his own lifetime…

The liner notes include brief paragraphs on all 23 carols. There are detailed notes on the performers and the composer, including several illustrations. Texts of the carols are not included. Finally, the recording was dedicated by John Turner to ‘The Memory of my late friends David Munrow and Christopher Hogwood.’

These imaginative carols are beautifully sung (and played). The purity of the vocal line is both astounding and moving. The nature of these carols as necessarily short pieces, printed on Christmas Cards, is that simplicity of style and economy of musical resources is emphasised over complexity. This lends to the enchantment of this CD. All these carols are lovely and sum up (for me) the joy and the theological wonder of the Christmas-Tide.