The Rose in the Middle of Winter

Bob Chilcott has been described by The Observer as 'a contemporary hero of British Choral Music', and his music is commissioned and sung by choirs throughout the world. His Christmas pieces, a number of which are heard here in première recordings, reveal his enthusiasm for recently written texts, to which he responds with acute verbal sensitivity. Commotio is one of the UK's foremost chamber choirs, hailing from Oxford, where they have performed choral music of the 20th and 21st centuries since 1999.

The central piece of this album is the previously unrecorded carol sequence On Christmas Night, which shows how his ambition is to infuse new blood alongside more traditional melodies and for each to be enriched by it.

Bob Chilcott is one of Britain's most popular and most-performed composers of choral music, and has enriched the contemporary repertoire immensely.