A Christmas Carol Redux
This Christmas season I am covering A Christmas Carol from the Skylark Vocal Ensemble under the direction of Michael Guard with music from Benedict Sheehan.
Say again...?
That earlier recording came out in 2022, on Blu-ray nonetheless. This one is from 2025, and I believe will only be available for streaming, although stay tuned as I update this blog post.
It is extremely rare in Classical Music to see the exact same program, with the exact same performers, putting out essentially the exact same recording within a few years of each other. I would be hard put to name such an occasion, although when Christmas is involved, perhaps there are more examples.
What is the difference here? Well, if you didn't see it on the cover, Christine Baranski is narrating the Charles Dickens tale. Earlier, Sarah Walker narrated, an Appalachian storyteller where I had my doubts regarding her abilities in a British tale. Baranski is a Hollywood figure, also hailing from the US, however her huskier, lower-pitched vocal quality seems better geared towards a ghost story.
Otherwise, we have Christmas carol arrangements from Benedict Sheehan, an adapted Dickens narration from Guard, and plenty of choral singing from Skylark. I do believe Guard and the Skylark Vocal Ensemble tour around with this program every year, so this is now a well lived-in production. For more information on the whole work, check out my earlier blog post in the fuchsia link above.
I will update with more detail as I spend more time with this recording, but I wanted to post my initial remarks at seeing this recording appear in the past weeks. If you haven't heard the Skylark Vocal Ensemble's unique approach to music programming, their recordings are well worth a listen.
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