Live choice
Paul Riley selects the UK’S best concerts and operas for Christmas 2018
LONDON
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Cadogan Hall, 7 December
Tel: +44 (0)20 7730 4500
Web: www.cadoganhall.com
Jingle bells at the ready as sleigh rides by Delius and Prokofiev gild the RPO’S selection box of yuletide favourites.
They’re topped and tailed by excerpts from Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel and Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. The conductor is Owain Arwel Hughes.
Christmas Festival
St John’s Smith Square,
8-23 December
Tel: +44 (0)20 7222 1061
Web: www.sjss.org.uk
The St John’s Christmas Festival has served as London’s musical Advent calendar for over 30 years now, and Polyphony’s Messiah under Stephen Layton has become something of a tradition. Layton also conducts Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and among 2018’s debutants are The English Concert and Ensemble les Surprises, who explore Baroque noëls, motets and sonatas from the Old and New Worlds.
Juice Vocal Ensemble
Kings Place, 9 December
Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 1490
Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk
As part of a Kings Place countdown to Christmas that includes Tenebrae, Sonoro and the Hanover Band and Chorus, Juice Vocal Ensemble launches its new album: Snow Queens. Commissions from Tarik O’regan, Emily Hall and Alison Willis sit alongside arrangements of ancient carols, Renaissance lute songs and Kate Bush.
Temple Winter Festival
Temple Church, 10-14 December Tel: +44 (0)20 7427 5641
Web: templewinterfestival.co.uk While the ORA Singers under Suzi Digby build a programme around four Magnificat settings for their medieval-to-modern foray, Peter Phillips’s Tallis Scholars take Palestrina’s magnificent double-choir Hodie Christus natus est Mass as the start of an evening that includes the premiere of a new work by Nico Muhly. Sansara and the Collegium Musicum of London also spread Christmas cheer.
BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Barbican, 17 December
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ (see also p68) takes up the Christmas story when Herod orders the massacre of the innocents, and the holy family takes flight into Egypt. Edward Gardner conducts, tenor Robert Murray is the narrator, mezzo Karen Cargill (see p26) is Mary and Matthew Best sings Herod.
SOUTH Spiritato
University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, 7 December
Tel: +44 (0)1865 244806
Web: www.musicatoxford.com
The theme of ‘La notte di
Natale’ wraps wintry and festive concertos by Vivaldi, Corelli, Torelli and Locatelli around two cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti including Christmas Eve’s O di Betlemme altera. Augusta Hebbert is the soprano soloist.
Choir and Orchestra of the Enlightenment
St George’s Bristol, 18 December Tel: +44 (0)845 40 24 001
Web: www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk Launched by a swirl of strings and the fervour of three trumpets plus drums, Bach’s joyous Nativity-to-epiphany Christmas Oratorio is directed from the keyboard by Steven Devine.
EAST
The Choir of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge
Great St Mary’s, Cambridge, 6 December
Tel: +44 (0)1223 357851
Web: cambridgeearlymusic.com Accompanied by period instruments, the Cambridge choir sings Marc-antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël – into which he stitched nearly a dozen popular carols. German compliments of the season are dispatched by the composers Buxtehude, Schütz and Weckmann.
Britten Sinfonia and Voices
Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 22 December
Tel: +44 (0)845 548 7650
Web: www.brittensinfonia.com Hallelujah! With a dream team of soloists comprising soprano Sophie Bevan, countertenor Iestyn Davies, tenor Allan Clayton and baritone Roderick Williams, Britten Sinfonia’s account of Handel’s Messiah stands out from the crowd. Eamonn Dougan conducts.
MIDLANDS, NORTH & WALES
Puts’s Silent Night
Town Hall, Leeds, 30 November-7 December
Tel: +44 (0)844 848 2720
Web: www.operanorth.co.uk
Silent Night, Kevin Puts’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera based on the story of the 1914 Christmas truce, receives its UK premiere in a production by Tim Albery. Nicholas Kok conducts (see ‘Backstage with…’) and Rupert Charlesworth is the German soldier transfixed by the singing of Scottish troops from across no-man’s land.
Solomon’s Knot
St Mary the Virgin, Nottingham, 1 December
Tel: +44 (0)115 989 5555
Web: solomonsknotcollective.com ‘Christmas in Leipzig’ corrals three holders of the office of Thomaskantor, culminating in JS Bach whose E flat Magnificat is sung with its interpolated festive laudes. A setting by his immediate predecessor Kuhnau and a motet by Schelle complete the ensemble Solomon’s Knot’s 10th-anniversary gift to itself.
York Early Music Christmas Festival
York, 8-15 December
Tel: + (0)1904 658338
Web: www.ncem.co.uk
A complete Bach Christmas Oratorio, ‘Lullabies to an Infant King’ from Voces8, and the Celtic gypsy klezmer of Dodo Street Band are among this year’s presents waiting to be unwrapped in and around York’s Walmgate. Ex Cathedra follows a Marian trail, while Improviso heads to 16th-century Spain and 17th-century Italy by way of Charpentier and Bach.
The Sixteen
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 9 December
Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 8444
Web: www.thesixteen.com
From seasonal Sweelinck and Sheppard to Joseph Phibbs and Cecilia Mcdowall, The Sixteen’s exuberant time-traveling takes to the road, criss-crossing England from Taunton to Gateshead via a double stop-over at London’s Cadogan Hall.
Sirinu
St Mary’s Church, Warwick, 11 December
Tel: +44 (0)1926 334418
Web: www.leamingtonmusic.org Bringing gentle anarchy to Leamington Music’s Christmas Festival, Sirinu dusts down the gittern, hurdy-gurdy and shawm for a medieval feast presided over by the Lord of Misrule. Bookending it are the Hardyesque revels of The Mellstock Band and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.
SCOTLAND & N IRELAND
Scottish Ensemble
Caird Hall, Dundee, 3 December Tel: +44 (0)1382 434940
Web: www.scottishensemble.co.uk Performed in its string orchestral arrangement, Vasks’s Musica Adventus is paired with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto to provide the seasonal heart of the Scottish Ensemble’s sevenconcert tour, which also enlists guitarist Sean Shibe for Vivaldi.
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 14 December
Tel: +44 (0)131 228 1155
Web: www.rsno.org.uk
Prokofiev’s Winter Bonfire spreads a warming glow as conductor Thomas Søndergård and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra prepare to enter the magical Christmas Eve world of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. And there’s more Tchaikovsky: cellist Johannes Moser plays the debonair Rococo Variations.
Ulster Orchestra
Belfast Waterfront, 4 January Tel: +44 (0)28 9033 4455
Web: www.ulsterorchestra.org.uk Belfast will see in 2019 in Viennese style with tenor
Noah Stewart among others. Conductor Christopher Altstaedt and the Ulster Orchestra take a leaf out of the Vienna Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s Day offering, relishing a programme of Straussian evergreens that includes the Blue Danube waltz and the Radetzky March.