When, in late 2021, I heard the UK premiere of Sir James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio, it truly felt like a heaven-sent gift of musical and vocal splendour after the long famine of our lockdown purgatory. Four years later, with the renewed thrill of large-scale live performance no longer so acute, how does it hold up? For the most part, with undimmed brilliance: at the Barbican, the composer himself conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a signature work that gathers four centuries of sacred music into a 100-minute meditation on the Christmas story. It transcends pastiche to Read more ...

Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto & Orchestral Works BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/John Andrews, Samantha Ege (piano) (Resonus) Image The rediscovery of the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) in recent years has always been marred by the disappointing fact that the music isn’t as good as everyone (myself included) would like it to be. But this first album dedicated to the music of his daughter Avril (1903-1998) suggests that her work may have more chance of enduring in the present day. Although neglected in her lifetime ( Read more ...

If this time of year should prompt everyone to count their blessings, then one precious musical gift shines brightly over Smith Square Hall this week. For the choral ensemble Polyphony, its director Stephen Layton and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, it’s just a normal Christmas festival in Westminster: Bach’s Christmas Oratorio last night, Messiah this evening.Yet I came away from the Bach reflecting that, four decades or so back, period-conscious Baroque music-making of this quality and commitment would still have struck most listeners as a revolution – perhaps a miracle of sorts Read more ...

Vox Luminis, the vocal and instrumental group based in Namur and led by Lionel Meunier, continued their residency at the Wigmore Hall, hot on the heels of a memorable rendition of Bach’s B Mass at the Spanish Church a few blocks away, with an equally breathtaking evening of works by Bach and his predecessor as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau.There were two wonderfully celebratory Magnificats, the first by Kuhnau, and the second by Bach – his earlier version in E flat Major ( BWV243a). Although not specifically for Christmas, they have both traditionally been associated with the year’s Read more ...

There were moments during the starry, two-evening Beare’s Chamber Music Festival when the quality of the playing reached such heights, it was tempting to ask if a higher level of chamber music-making can or even could exist anywhere. So, although London already has an incredibly rich and vibrant chamber music scene, this event – in its second edition and planned to take place every two years -  is clearly additive to it. The two concerts were vociferously applauded, especially  the second, Wigmore Hall concert, in which there were standing ovations at the end of each half.The two Read more ...

“My goal was to take the Messiah as if it had been written yesterday,” the conductor and eminent French harpsichordist Christophe Rousset told Tom Service on Radio 3 on Saturday. “[It would be] as if we had received the score for the first time… [and were thinking] wow, how amazing this piece is and how fresh it can be.”“Wow” was certainly a word that came to mind as the English Baroque Soloists launched into the Messiah’s French-style overture with nimble ebullience, emphasising the beats in bold stripes of tonal colour. It was as if Rousset, one of our most stylish and subversive Read more ...

There is, of course, a long tradition in this country of Christmas Messiah performances – but it’s not one I’ve ever previously participated in. This was the first time I’ve ever heard Messiah live, despite being quite long in the tooth – and it was terrific. I can see what I’ve been missing out on all these years. Handel really knew what he was doing – as do the Philharmonia Chorus, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and four excellent soloists, all under the leadership of Eamonn Dougan.I am no expert on the scholarship behind performance practice of Messiah, although the piece is Read more ...

  Image ¡Feliz Navidad! – Mexican Baroque Music for Christmas Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens (CPO)Two of the four composers featured in this effervescent anthology never set foot in early 18th century Mexico. However, printed copies of sacred works by the Madrid-based Francisco Corselli and José de Nebra did cross the Atlantic for liturgical use in newly built Mexican cathedrals. There’s some delectable music here, the works by Manuel de Sareumaya and Ignacio Jerusalem especially enjoyable. The Italian-born Jerusalem (1707- Read more ...

It seldom happens that you long to hear choral music not in a modern auditorium but some chilly, echoing cavern of a great Victorian town hall. But that thought did arise as a full-strength London Symphony Orchestra and its hundred-strong chorus crammed uncomfortably into every inch of the Barbican hall’s stage for Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem. It felt like squeezing a herd of elephants into a cake tin, and the Barbican’s disobliging acoustic hardly helped enrich the mood. Yet Antonio Pappano still managed to work the uplifting magic that he reliably brings to choral blockbusters Read more ...

There are enough historical reasons for differing approaches to Handel’s Messiah to allow every conductor to produce, effectively, their own edition. American conductor Jeannette Sorrell gave the Hallé audience a streamlined, power-driven one that had them on their feet at the end as well as during the Hallelujah Chorus.The main reasons for that were undoubtedly the precision attack and dynamic strength of the Hallé Choir’s singing – most of them doing it without the book (and choral director Matthew Hamilton got one of the biggest cheers as he took his bow) – and the exciting and Read more ...

Would it be possible to get to the end of the year without hearing a single Bruckner symphony live? I’d reckoned without the presence in Dublin of fabulous conductor Anja Bihlmaier, whose 2022 concert with the National Symphony of Ireland was a fine introduction to the thriving concert scene here, and of Boris Giltburg, one of the most engaging living pianists, in Mozart (and a far from insubstantial Schumann encore). Besides, Bruckner’s Ninth gives the lie more than any of the others to any settled spirituality or faith. Here the smoke-into-fire coda of the first movement and the Read more ...

Zum Roten Igel – the “Red Hedgehog Tavern” – was a concert venue with pub attached in 19th century Vienna, frequented by the like of Schubert and Brahms. It is also the name of an ensemble committed to exploring the connections between these “classical” composers and the Volkisch music that would have been heard in the next-door room. In this case it means re-scoring Schubert’s String Quintet and garlanding it with wild interstitial dance jams, recreating an imaginary historical mash-up.It is a Marmite project, with a full Purcell Room seeing several people leave during proceedings Read more ...