Song for Snow - A Cambridge Christmas: CD
Release date: November 20, 2026
It’s that time of year… A thoughtful yet enchanting album of 20th- and 21st-century Christmas carols from The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge and director Steven Grahl affirms this most vibrant of seasonal traditions.
Particularly welcome is an emphasis on recent and contemporary women composers from across the choral world, including Florence Price, Sally Beamish, Elizabeth Poston, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Lucy Walker and Errollyn Wallen, whose music dovetails with that of John Rutter, Herbert Howells, Gustav Holst, Piers Connor Kennedy and Kenneth Leighton.
Those newer carols sit among familiar old friends such as ‘Stille Nacht’, ‘Carol of the Bells’ and ‘In dulci jubilo’.
A modern folk classic is found in ‘The truth from above’, which Vaughan Williams transcribed directly from a melody sung to him by a local farmworker as he wandered the England looking for the nation’s lost melodies.
A similar story from the other side of the Atlantic pertains to the delicate tune of ‘I wonder as I wander’, which came to the world’s attention via a collector of folk songs in the Appalachian mountains.
Ranked by Gramophone as among the top five choirs in the world, The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge has long been seen as the finest of the world’s mixed-voice student ensembles. Their most recent album of Finzi choral music (released June 2026) was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone.
Vaughan Williams: The Truth Sent from Above
Praetorius, J. Sandström: Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen
Frances-Hoad: Bogoroditse Devo
Niles: I Wonder as I Wander (Arr. Carter)
Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter
Tavener: The Lamb
Gruber: Stille Nacht
Leontovych: Carol Of The Bells
Anonymous: O Leave Your Sheep (Arr. Leighton)
Price: Song for Snow
Howells: Long, Long Ago
Beamish: In the Stillness
Rutter: Candlelight Carol
Pott: Balulalow
Wallen: Peace on Earth
Kennedy: Hym Worship We Now Borne so Fre
Poston: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
Anonymous: In dulci jubilo (Arr. Pearsall)
L. Walker: Away in a Manger
Frances-Hoad: Good Day, Sir Christemas!
