The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin led by Justin Doyle present an album of choral music by Benjamin Britten marking the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. At the heart of the program are A Ceremony of Carols, A Boy was Born, and the Missa brevis in D, complemented by A Hymn of St. Columba and The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. The recording also features the boys of the Staats- und Domchor Berlin, harpist Anna Viechtl, organist Marcel Andreas Ober and pianist Philip Mayers. While conceived as a Christmas release, the album follows no conventional festive arc. For Doyle, the repertoire is closely bound up with his own biography. A former chorister at Westminster Cathedral, he encountered several of these works as a boy. For the new recording, he also worked from scores containing Britten’s handwritten annotations, gaining insights into the composer’s sound world and performance practice.