For a disc like this, everything hinges on the singer. Do you like her voice or don’t you? Is it compatible with the songs? Do her interpretive decisions make sense? Can you listen to it for a whole hour (actually 67 minutes)? And then, of course, there are the songs themselves, the instrumental players, and the arrangements. I’m happy to report that in this case all components work together beautifully to make a delightful and entertaining Christmas concert. Among the 17 selections are a few old favorites–Wexford Carol, Lord of the Dance, Lute Book Lullaby, and Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day–along with many less familiar but equally agreeable songs from Italy, Scotland, Ireland, and England. Rosa Lamoreaux has a warm, pretty, well-tuned soprano that’s expressive, clear in diction, and full of personality. Her instrumental colleagues, all experts in this sort of music, support her songs with arrangements that in themselves are interesting and colorful but never detract from the voice. As for the sound, well, you don’t really notice it–nothing artificial, nothing in your face nor too distant–which to me means the engineers got it right. If you’re a fan of the Baltimore Consort, you’ll find a strong resemblance here to that group’s own recordings, in both type of music and in the similarity between Lamoreaux’s soprano and that of Baltimore’s Custer LaRue. But who says there isn’t room for one more such first class celebration of some of the Christmas season’s most agreeable tunes, many of which you won’t find anywhere else?
