MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Christmas a Cappella

"Christmas carol CDs don't come better than this" - Christchurch Press

Marbeck's biggest selling Classical recording for the year 2001

"Musica Sacra, the former Auckland Cathedral Choir, followed director Indra Hughes when he was controversially made redundant in 1998. The Cathedral's loss was St Sepulchre's gain as you can hear on its first CD, Christmas a cappella. It's a well chosen collection of some familiar, and some new carols. There are two New Zealand pieces. most notably John Wells' haunting The Shepherds' Carol, and some beautiful arrangements; David Goodenough's treatment of Away in a Manger is gently evocative of the scene. The singing is full-blooded and expressive, marred occasionally by a woolliness in the inner parts."
- Rod Biss (Sunday Star-Times)

Outstanding first release by a major new force in New Zealand choral music, Musica Sacra, led by Musical Director Indra Hughes.

Indra Hughes is widely recognized as one of New Zealand's most versatile and respected musicians. He came to Auckland in 1995 after his early training at the Cathedral in Blackburn, Lancashire and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he was Organ Scholar and also took a degree in Law, to take up the position of Organist and Director of Music at Auckland Cathedral. A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, he holds the Gerald Knight Memorial Prize for the highest marks in the R.C.O. Choir Training Diploma Examinations. He has twice directed the music for Her Majesty the Queen, first in Oxford and then in 1995 at the great service of thanksgiving marking the opening of the completed cathedral in Auckland.

When not immersed in music of one kind or another he tries to spend as much time as possible in his two favourite places, the Bay of Islands and Rarotonga.

Saint Martin, who became Bishop of Tours in about 371 A.D., was chiefly remembered for his act of charity in cutting his cloak in half to clothe an almost naked beggar whom he found shivering in a severe frost at Amiens. Later on, the Saint's cloak (Latin: cappa or diminutive cappella) was preserved in a sanctuary which hence came to be the first church building to bear the name 'Cappella' or Chapel. Eventually the term came to be used to refer to church musicians, like J. S. Bach who was Kapellmeister of St Thomas's, Leipzig; and hence by extension the term a cappella has come to be understood as meaning music 'in the church style'. It is in this tradition that Musica Sacra presents this programme of unaccompanied choral music for Christmas. We have chosen a variety of pieces: some well-known traditional Christmas favourites which need no explanation; some familiar tunes in new arrangements; and some never-before recorded pieces.