Dickens alive!
Our pick of the best Christmas concerts and operas, plus a guide to Rimsky-korsakov’s Christmas Eve
Christmas at Saffron Hall begins with a chill and a scowl but ends with jollity and warmth, as Neil Brand’s musical version of Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol invites the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers to get in touch with their inner Scrooge. Conductor Martin André directs the bah-humbugging.
GOTHIC VOICES
Holkham Hall, Wells-next-the-sea, Norfolk, 3 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)1328 713111 Web: www.gothicvoices.co.uk
Ahead of performances at the Tower of London and York Early Music Christmas Festival, the vocal quartet unveils its new programme in Holkham’s Marble Hall. ‘Nowel Syng We Bothe Al and Som’ explores the Annunciation and birth of Jesus in carols and motets, as well as festive Mass movements by late medieval composers John Dunstable and Leonel Power.
BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA & SINGERS
Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 3 Dec
Tel: 0845 548 7650 (UK only) Web: www.saffronhall.com
‘God bless us, every one!’ After a performance at the Barbican on 2 Dec, where it’s prefaced by Rimsky-korsakov’s Christmas Eve Suite (see box p122), the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers under conductor Martin André are Essex-bound with composer Neil Brand’s take on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Seasonal family fare ensures that ‘Bah, humbug!’ is not an option.
JOHN ADAMS’S EL NIÑO
Barbican, London, 4 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891 Web: www.barbican.org.uk
The libretto of John Adams’s ‘Nativity Oratorio’ El Niño, from 2000, is nothing if not exuberantly inclusive. It sources anything from the Benedictine composer Hildegard of Bingen to the father of the Reformation Martin Luther and Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos. Musically, Handel and contemporary pop are also in the frame. Adams himself conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus plus a fine cast led by soprano Joélle Harvey.
THE SIXTEEN
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 4 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 8444 Web: www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
The Three Kings are the focus of The Sixteen’s 2016 Christmas tour that stretches from Uppingham to Nottingham via London and Oxford. The choice of repertoire sees plainsong and traditional items woven around music by Palestrina, Lassus, Howells and Fricker. Conductor Harry Christophers ends with the eight-part Magnificat by Felice Anerio.
EX CATHEDRA
Town Hall, Birmingham, 4 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333 Web: www.thsh.co.uk
Jeffrey Skidmore’s Birmingham-based choir Ex Cathedra are performing over a dozen Christmas concerts, including an intriguing postscript to the Olympics. ‘A Brazilian Christmas’ showcases Ex Cathedra’s Consort and Baroque Orchestra in music from the colonial town of Ouro Preto, including the haunting Matinas de natal by Castro Lobo.
YORK EARLY MUSIC CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL
York, 8-15 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)1904 658338 Web: www.ncem.co.uk/xmas
Walmgate’s medieval St Margaret’s Church shoulders most of the concerts in a wideranging festive goodybag that briefly slips the Christmas leash, on 8 Dec, for a battlefieldinspired programme from Spiritato!. While Joglaresa and a cappella consort Renaissance send season’s greetings, Magnificats by two generations of Bachs absorb the Yorkshire Bach Choir and Baroque Soloists.
MASAAKI SUZUKI
Cadogan Hall, London, 9 & 10 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)20 7730 4500 Web: www.cadoganhall.com
Earlier this year, Masaaki Suzuki brought his Bach Collegium Japan to the Barbican for a Bach residency culminating in the Magnificat. Now he’s back to continue the Christmas story with the Christmas Oratorio, BWV
248, that Bach lavished on Leipzig a decade after. The Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment supply the musical heft – with Singet dem Herrn and the Sanctus from the B minor Mass amplifying the good cheer.
ST JOHN’S CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL
St John’s Smith Square, London, 9-23 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)20 7222 1061 Web: www.sjss.org.uk
Conductor Stephen Layton’s performances of Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s B minor
Mass are pretty much fixtures as St John’s Smith Square unwraps its annual festival.
This year’s newcomers are La Nuova Musica and The Gesualdo Six, while returnees include Tenebrae and The Cardinall’s Musick. The choral feast is leavened by Messiaen’s
La Nativité du Seigneur performed on the magnificent Klais organ by David Titterington.
ROYAL NORTHERN SINFONIA & CHORUS
Sage, Gateshead, 10 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)191 443 4661 Web: www.sagegateshead.com
It’s nearly a decade since violinist Reinhard Goebel’s period instrument ensemble
Music Antiqua Köln disbanded, but happily, reinvented as a conductor, he brings his trenchant Baroque insights to the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Chorus’s annual foray into Handel’s Messiah. Soloists include soprano Deborah York and tenor Nicholas Mulroy.
CHRISTMAS AT KINGS PLACE
Kings Place, London, 10-21 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 1490 Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk
Whether it’s Simon Callow narrating Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf or choral rarities by Osiander and Hoyoul, Kings Place has Christmas all wrapped up. The Dunedin Consort dispenses Handel’s Messiah, Oxford Baroque re-imagines the 1723 Christmas Day Vespers in St Thomas’s Leipzig, while the new professional chamber choir Sonoro makes its Kings Place debut.
PSALMODY
St Mary’s Church, Dedham, 11 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)1206 366603 Web: www.suffolkvillagesfestival.com
Peter Holman reunites Suffolk Villages Festival stalwarts Psalmody and The John Jenkins Consort for Charpentier’s festive Messe de minuit pour Noël. The second half journeys through 17th-century Germany and Spain before alighting in 19th-century Yorkshire for John Foster’s choral and orchestral setting of While shepherds watched their flocks by night.
OPUS ANGLICANUM
Wells Cathedral, Somerset, 12 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)1749 672 773 Web: www.wellscathedral.org.uk
Opus Anglicanum has long specialised in marrying the spoken and the sung, and although it has commissioned works from the likes of Sally Beamish and Gabriel Jackson, the medieval repertoire retains a special place in its affections. Fifteenth-century English carols and liturgical music by Machaut, Josquin, Obrecht and Cornysh are threaded through a seasonal candlelit celebration.
TEMPLE WINTER FESTIVAL
Temple Church, London 12-19 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)20 7427 5641 Web: www.templemusic.org
St John’s Smith Square isn’t the only
Christmas Festival to sign off with Handel’s Messiah (see Choice 8). After six concerts in Temple Church, spanning Finzi from the New London Orchestra and London Chorus to seasonal Bach and Messiaen from organist Greg Morris, the fourth Temple Winter Festival decamps to Middle Temple Hall for a final ‘Hallelujah’ by the Choir and Orchestra of Classical Opera under Ian Page.
ORCHESTRA OF OPERA NORTH
Town Hall, Hudders eld, 13 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)1484 225755 Web: www.kirklees.gov.uk/townhalls
For over 30 years, the conjunction of Raymond Briggs’s whimsical tale and Howard Blake’s score have made The Snowman a
Christmas must-see. Conductor Hugh Brunt compounds the storytelling, prefacing an accompanied screening with Paul Patterson’s Roald Dahl-indebted Little Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs. John Savournin narrates.
SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA CHORUS
Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, 15 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)131 668 2019 Web www.sco.org.uk
Britten’s choral variations A Boy was Born headlined the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus’s Christmas concert at Greyfriars Kirk last year. And, 12 months on, the conductor Gregory Batsleer is backing Britten again, this time with the harp-gilded Ceremony of Carols. The 20th- and 21st-century companions include Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour le temps de Noël and James Macmillan’s Advent antiphon O Radiant Dawn.
JOGLARESA
Bridges Centre, Monmouth, 17 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)1291 330020 Web: www.wyevalleymusic.org.uk
‘Caroles of Nunnes and Roses’ is the title of the new Yuletide programme from Belinda Sykes’s intrepid band of medievalists. Drawing on accompaniment from bagpipes, fidel, harp, dulcimer, gittern and percussion, the five voices delve into a rich world of nowells, chants and wassails (including a Christmas lullaby from a 15th-century manuscript assembled for the nuns of St Mary’s Chester).
REINIS ZARINS
St George’s Bristol, 19 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)845 4024 001 Web: www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk
Before its final festive heave-ho, Bristol’s church-turned-concert-hall takes an elevated pause as Latvian pianist Reinis Zarin≥ tackles Vingt regards sur l’enfant-jésus, the epic cycle Messiaen composed in World War II.
THE KING’S CONSORT
Wigmore Hall, London, 19 Dec
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141 Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
Neatly complementing Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach Christmas Oratorio (see Choice 7), The King’s Consort turns the clock back three quarters of a century for Heinrich Schütz’s The Christmas Story – lent a Venetian context with preceding works by Guami, Gussago and the Gabrielis. Tenor Benjamin Hulett is the Evangelist, soprano Julia Doyle is the Angel and baritone David Wilson-johnson sings the role of Herod.
TALLIS SCHOLARS
Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, 20 Dec
Tel 0844 848 2720 (UK only) Web: www.operanorth.co.uk
The Tallis Scholars throw themselves into the Christmas season with four concerts built around Cipriano de Rore’s Missa Praeter rerum seriem and motet Hodie Christus natus est. There’s music too by Josquin, Victoria and Taverner; and Old World meets New in Hernando Franco’s setting of the Salve Regina.
MANCHESTER CAMERATA
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 1 Jan
Tel: +44 (0)161 907 9000 Web: www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk
Having embraced Jimi Hendrix to launch the season, Manchester Camerata’s music director Gábor Takács-nagy returns to head a New Year’s Day Viennese Gala with a twist. Favourite arias by Johann Strauss II and Lehár feature soprano Ailish Tynan, while violinist Adi Brett is the soloist in Vaughan Williams’s un-viennese The Lark Ascending.