a Christmas issue which is genuinely challenging and different…Martin’s music evokes in an extraordinary suggestive manner the theological paradox buried within the Eden story… The Gabrieli’s rapt and intense performance is remarkable in it poise and tonal control at mainly low dynamic levels… A wonderful Christmas offering: treat yourself and friends or both, to it

It is arguably the most moving setting of these words written since Britten’s version in A Ceremony of Carols, and I wish it appeared on disc and was performed more often.

This is by no means a conventional Christmas disc. Indeed, tinsel and holly are nowhere in sight. It is, in the best sense, a challenging - and hugely rewarding - programme which has been put together thoughtfully and with discernment. The performances are absolutely first rate...enjoyment of this disc need be confined solely to the Christmas period.

If ever greatness announced itself, it was with Britten’s audaciously inventive and extended choral variations, A Boy Was Born...McCreesh has made it the end piece of an ancient and modern Nativity programme...which the Gabrielis gave atmospherically at Shoreditch Church as part of the Spitalfields Winter Festival.