4/5
A Christmas album with a twist, this charming new CD celebrates the music of a Mexican cathedral
17 December 2020 • 6:00am
Siglo de Oro s new album is released by Delphian
Credit: Delphian
The normal flood of classical Christmas albums has been reduced to something between a stream and a trickle this year, for obvious reasons. The biggest hitter, Jonas Kaufmann’s It’s Christmas!, which has the great operatic tenor singing Mariah Carey and Bing Crosby hits as well as sweet German carols, has swept all before it.
But if you’re search of something a bit different, you might like to try this delightful album of Baroque Christmas music with a twist. Rather than Vienna or Rome or Paris, the music hails from Puebla de los Ángeles, a prosperous city in the Spanish colony of “New Spain” or what we would call Mexico. In 1620 a gifted composer named Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla moved there from Spain, abandoning a well-paid job as “Master of the Music” at Cadiz Cathedr