Kevin Sutton replies to me:

>>In all, I recommend this disc mainly for the repertory.
>
>Sorry Steve, but it is the repertoire that would cause me to run screaming
>from the hall.  Thomson's choral music, although pretty for about a bar
>and a half, is fraught with simply horrible and awkward text settings;
>dull, lifeless, endless strings of quarter notes ad nauseaum and an
>incessant stream of parallel 6ths such to cause insulin shock from the
>most hearty pancreas.

That is indeed a good description of Thompson at his worst, and there are
large stretches of this in his Nativity.  But I can't deny inspired
moments, even scenes.

>It's simply turgid music

It may be a lot of things, but "turgid" - in the sense of grandiloquent,
ornate, bloated, or distended -isn't one of them.  If anything, it is
stripped of ornamentation, and the orchestration is clear as bottled water.

>The only thing more torturous than the Nativity is the Testament of
>Freedom, the hearing of which has upon more than one occasion sent me into
>paroxisms.

Surely not the only thing.  The Testament isn't one of my favorites either.
One good tune and that's it.  Incidentally, I'm reviewing a performance of
it now.

Steve Schwartz