I was driving back from a chorus Christmas party on Friday listening to A Classical Christmas on Apple Music, and this new arrangement of The First Noel by Peter Gregson came up in the play list. Now I’ve sung countless arrangements of most Christmas carols, yet this one stunned me with it’s sheer beauty. The choir singing is Tenebrae, a UK small choir renowned for their precision and passion for music, and that certainly shows though in the this piece.
One of the things I hear in this recording is that Gregson may have written vocal harmonics into some of the supporting instruments. The result is a truly ethereal sound, which is even more effective when heard with speakers or headphones supporting the piece’s Dolby Atmos encoding.
If you need some music to get you into the mysterioso feeling of Christmas, I highly recommend Gregson’s First Noel.
N.B. You may require a subscription to Apple Music to hear this piece. I don’t have a Spotify account, so I can’t check there.