Christmas Carols & Motets

Musical Concepts is pleased to announce the third release in one of the most ambitious early music reissue projects of all time - Alfred Deller: The Complete Vanguard Recordings. The series brings together every recording made by Alfred Deller - as solo countertenor, ensemble member of the Deller Consort, and conductor - for the legendary, enterprising Vanguard record label. These recordings created a sensation with their initial release, and have influenced and inspired three generations of music lovers, from casual listeners to the top tiers of performing artists and scholars.

With the LP release in 1956 of "The Holly and the Ivy" on Vanguard, producer Seymour Solomon and countertenor Alfred Deller assembled an innovative program for a Christmas album: one side of carols familiar in the United States and Great Britain, and the other of rare English carols from the medieval and renaissance periods. Over the next decade, Vanguard would release three more LPs with Deller, two in collaboration with then young early music firebrand René Clemencic and his Vienna-based instrumental consort, focused on English and European music for the nativity and Christmas from the medieval through the early baroque periods.