The bright recording and arrangements (lots of bells, shiny brass) go delightfully with Sutherland’s high-placed voice, at its most fabulous in 1965 when this was recorded. There are fewer embellishments to the vocal line than you might expect (or want) from Dame Joan, but the added trills in “Joy to the World” are indeed a joy; the riff at the end of “Deck the hall” is as unexpected as it is delicious. There and in “The 12 days of Christmas” we get such cute, quick singing that this CD is set apart from the usual Christmas pack. Her “O holy night” is set so high that it’s hard to believe how easily she gets the big D-flat above C on the final “divine”. A simply sung “Good King Wenceslas” finds her alternating verses with one Patricia Clarke, who sounds like a young girl; “The Holly and the Ivy” is a tinkly delight. In some of the carols Sutherland’s famously mushy diction is very much in evidence (“O divine redeemer” might as well be in Urdu; “Ave Maria” is practically funny in its incomprehensibility)–but oddly, we get every word of “The twelve days…” In short, this is joyful and gleaming, just like La Stupenda’s voice, and remarkably un-boring, in contrast with most collections of this sort of music. [11/3/2004]
