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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: My favorite Christmas records

December 19, 2006 by Terry Teachout

– Bethlehem Down (Peter Warlock, recorded by the King’s Singers). Poor Peter Warlock, who put out the cat and turned on the gas at the end of a turbulent, too-short life, left behind a goodly number of modern Christmas carols, of which the modally flavored “Bethlehem Down,” written in 1927, is the most frequently performed and (in my opinion) the prettiest. This performance is part of an unusually wide-ranging program of carols that also includes an exquisitely sung version of Praetorius’s “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen,” which might just be my all-time favorite traditional carol.


– Bounce of the Sugar Plum Fairy (Tchaikovsky-Shavers, recorded by the John Kirby Sextet). I have a sweet tooth for jazzed-up classics from the swing era, and this riffy, dapper version of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” charms my socks right off.


– A Ceremony of Carols (Benjamin Britten, recorded by Osian Ellis, Sir David Willcocks, and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge). If you’ve never heard it, order this CD right now.


– The Christmas Song (Mel Torm

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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