Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols is sung for the first time by Girl and Boy Choristers together, conducted by Edmund Aldhouse and accompanied by Anne Denholm who was harpist to the King when he was Prince of Wales.

The 1942 collection of settings from medieval and sixteenth-century carol texts is framed at beginning and end by plainsong which celebrates Christ’s incarnation, ‘Hodie Christus Natus Est’.

Today Christ is born, today the Saviour appears; today the angels sing on earth, the archangels rejoice. Today the just exult, saying ‘Glory to God in the Highest, alleluia!

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