Ensemble Altera has just released a marvelous new album for Christmas.

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Feminine Voices by the vocal group Ensemble Altera celebrates the female voice and the Christmas season with a kaleidoscopic selection made up of the Magnificat, Ave Maria, and carols, “each of which is more wonderful than the last.” The album has received major awards, including a 5-star review and the Christmas Choice designation from BBC Music Magazine in its December 2025 issue.

Gramophone notes that the group brings “calm clarity to frosty, wintry textures” while Europadisc adds that the new album’s capstone—Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols—is:

“Thrillingly directed, and expertly shaped and paced by Lowrey, it sets the cap on a Christmas disc of exceptional interest, standing out from the many that are released every year. Don’t miss it!”

With works composed by women including Hildegard von Bingen, Imogen Holst, Germaine Tailleferre, Cecilia McDowall, Joanna Marsh, Barbara Strozzi, Elizabeth Poston, and a world premiere by Kerensa Briggs, the female voices of Altera under the direction of Christopher Lowrey take the spotlight on this new release. Male composers are also included, with works by John Rutter and the aforementioned Benjamin Britten. His famous Ceremony of Carols is now generally performed by boys’ choirs but in the liner notes Lowrey explains that it was originally written for the women of the Fleet Street Choir. Altera and the harpist Li Shan Tan perform this magical and spellbinding music with delight.

Colin Clarke has a detailed review in the Classical Explorer.

“The first track spells out a key element here: lines, sung by multiple voices, are so together it feels almost impossible. Here’s the first number, which as a single line exemplifies this perfectly: Hildegard von Bingen’s mixolydian O Viridissima, Virga.”

Hymn to the Dawn from Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, Op. 26, Third Group, by Gustav Holst showcases Li Shan Tan’s harp.

“Holst invokes the goddess of morning, the bringer of first light. Christmas tells a parallel story—a woman through whom daylight enters the world. Different traditions, same image: the dawn that makes everything possible.”

From the liner notes

Colin Clarke’s take is that “Christopher Lowrey paces [Hymn to the Dawn] superbly; the music just exudes spirituality, the harp adding a more mobile dimension, supporting and yet somehow parallel to the vocal activity.”

Adrian Peacock’s There is No Rose has been described as a “modern echo of Britten’s vision, carrying that same purity and wonder into the present.”

Clarke singles out Joanna Marsh’s Magnificat from St. Paul’s Service as “one of the highlights of the disk” . . .

. . . while I found Ian Shaw’s arrangement of I Sing of a Maiden a sparse yet arresting piece.

The lovely soprano voice of Eleonore Cockerham (one of my favorite singers) is featured in a setting of Coventry Carol written by Karensa Briggs expressly for Ensemble Altera.

The final selection I’ll feature from the new album is John Rutter’s familiar arrangement of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.

The album Feminine Voices at Christmas is available from Alpha Classics.

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To end with other pieces of traditional music one will hear at Christmas, I’ll feature the full complement of Ensemble Altera (with our son Andrew Bearden Brown as one of the tenors) singing “the S choruses: Surely, Stripes, and Sheep” from Handel’s Messiah. I especially love the quick pace of the group’s version of All We Like Sheep. Andrew is in New England this week—on his birthday (today) no less—singing this wonderful music with Altera. And note, for those in Florida, that the group is taking a southern tour in mid-February to Fort Lauderdale, Bradenton, and Naples singing the program A New Song: Psalms for the Soul.

Thank you, Ensemble Altera, for this wonderful gift. Happy Christmas, everyone!

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash