Chants, Chestnuts and Other Joyful Noise

This won’t replace other fine recordings of Britten’s popular evergreen (check out the St. John’s College Choir Cambridge version on London), but the singing is warm and bright, the recording clean and resonant. Especially worthy: the sparkling “Rejoice in the Lamb,” the serious “Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac.” Caveats: the airy church acoustic muddies the text occasionally; Michael Chance’s countertenor, fine as it is, tends to displace the sense of Isaac being a real boy.

Recordings are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good), four stars (excellent).