First came Carols for Choirs‚ then the new Oxford Book of Carols and now Noël!. New carol anthologies appear as frequently as Christmas itself‚ and associated with these come sleek‚ highly professional performances of selected carols lavishly presented on disc complete with cathedral­like acoustics (here it’s the warmly reverberant All Saints’ Tooting)‚ a hugely resourceful organ (and organist) and a brass/percussion ensemble for the big moments. No harm in that‚ especially where‚ as here‚ the chosen carols (19 out of the 47 in the published anthology Noël!) present a perfect‚ self­contained compendium and are given performances of a quality few choirs‚ if any‚ could hope to match; although I would hope that any who are inspired to emulate what they hear on this disc will take rather more care to ensure that brass and organ are tuned to the same pitch. Of the new carols‚ Peter Skellern’s self­consciously jerky So said the angel sounds a bit too suspiciously like a piece designed for a choral competition to offer much in the way of Christmas spirit. Robert Walker’s only mistake was to write such a lovely tune for words which already boast two of the finest carol melodies in existence; I can’t see his In the bleak mid­winter ever usurping either Holst or Darke. For all its saccharine and sugar‚ I find Paul Edward’s No Small Wonder an absolute charmer. Both the Winchester choristers and the Bach Choir sing with appropriate vigour and spirit under David Hill’s enthusiastic direction‚ with their combined forces producing the obligatory tingle down the spine. But while some of these arrangements seem content purely to produce a big and sumptuous noise‚ others either try much too hard (Ralph Allwood’s Jingle‚ bells)‚ or add so much to what is‚ really‚ a very simple thing (Hill’s own Away in a Manger) that one yearns for the year when an anthology appears both in print and on disc devoted to Christmas carols in their original‚ unadulterated form: now that will be a year to relish. In the meantime I’ll happily settle for this; I doubt we’re going to find a finer Christmas carol disc this season.