Chants, Chestnuts and Other Joyful Noise

These discs together reveal a generation of choral change. Much esteemed in its day, the Robert Russell Bennett arrange- ments of 17 traditional carols on “Many Moods,” a 1963 reissue, now sound almost comically inflated--bright, brassy and self-conscious--particularly in comparison with the contemplative “Angels on High,” which is all soft sophistication. “Angels” contains luminous accounts of Morten Lauridsen’s “O magnum mysterium,” Britten’s “Hymn to the Virgin” and Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.” The program, more than half again the length of “Many Moods,” ends with an equally warm, plush performance of Britten’s complete “Ceremony of Carols.’

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