If you’re looking for holiday music that you can listen to the whole year, look no further. From J. S. Bach to Eartha Kitt, we’ve put together a list of classical and campy Christmas tunes.
By: Jack Sullivan
Looking for holiday music that will last long after Dec. 25? Consider the greatest Christmas sounds of all, those by J. S. Bach. Two new Archiv compact discs offer Bach Advent and Christmas cantatas sung with passionate purity of line by the Monteverdi Choir and played with surprising dynamic contrast on old instruments by the English Baroque Soloists playing under John Eliot Gardiner. For Bach, the Christmas story evoked a wide range of emotions: uninhibited jubilation in the big choruses, intense introspection in ensembles and solos, glowing serenity in the chorales.
Naxos weighs in with its own disc of Bach Christmas Cantatas, performed in a more intimate manner: soloists sing throughout a work, joined by other singers, a practice more in keeping with Bach’s tradition than the modern concept of soloists versus choir, contends the Aradia Ensemble, who deliver superb performances under the direction of Kevin Mallon. With Naxos’s bargain price, this CD is hard to resist.
More Bach Christmas music, also from Naxos, is featured in A Star Over Bethlehem: Choral Jewels for Christmas, along with carols, chorales and instrumental pieces by Schutz, Pachelbel, Mendelssohn, Dupre and others. This is by no means the usual schlocky carol anthology, but well-chosen Christmas music in the classical tradition performed inspirited renditions by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Choral Arts Society of Washington conducted by Norman Scribner. Naxos also offers two generous stocking-stuffers: Opera A-Z and Classical A-Z, two-disc sets of excerpts from mostly first-class performances of standard repertory, supplemented with annotated booklets.
Bach not only wrote a significant amount of Christmas music for voices but also arranged Christmas chorales for organ. Eight of them appear on volume five of CPO’s magnificent ongoing set of Bach’s complete organ works, played on a variety of baroque instruments, in this case a restored Joachim Wagner organ from 1742. These sublime pieces include grandiose congregational hymns, shimmering fugues, and poetic verse interludes, all played with reverence and imaginative registration by Gerhard Weinberger. This disc also includes other Bach pieces, including three Preludes and Fugues and a rare Trio. The sound is resonant, but clear.
Those looking for rarefied and exotic Christmas fare should consider two welcome CDs: Archiv’s recording of John Sheppard’s Missa Cantate, a glorious specimen of English Renaissance polyphony sung with transcendental rapture by the Gabrieli Consort under Paul McCreesh in an enveloping recording made at Salisbury Cathedral; and a new Decca version of Berlioz’s Enfance du Christ, a masterpiece of austere sensuality from a composer known for grandiose Romanticism, in a shimmering performance by Charles Dutoit and the orchestra and chorus of the Montreal Symphony supplemented with five Berlioz choral encores. These discs will provide aesthetic transport long after all the Christmas parties.
More traditional meaning, for us, more high-Victorian Christmas fare is served up with pomp and majesty by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in its 21st Christmas album, this time for Telarc. The recently formed Orchestra at Temple Square, featuring pealing bells and juicy strings, is conducted by Craig Jessup. As usual, Telarc provides rich, warm sound.
In the same genre is Christmas Choral Classics sung with bright intensity by the Crouch End Festival Chorus and played with the full force of the City of Prague Philharmonic under Paul Bateman, in a resplendent recording for Silva Classics. These UK and Czech forces(much less expensive to record than huge ensembles here) have made impressive classic film music albums; here they manifest a similar over-the-top enthusiasm, with splendid brass and thrusting chorus in "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" and schmaltzy strings in the slower carols.
A 50s Christmas is served up in The Most Fabulous Christmas Album Ever from RCA, accurately described as "a little wacky, a little quirky, maybe even outright strange just like spending the holidays with the whole family." Carmen McCrae sings Mel Torme’s "Christmas Song" with imperious style; Hilton Ruiz plays a jazzy "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer;" Ann-Margaret and Al Hirt enact a soap-operatic Christmas seduction in "Baby It’s Cold Outside;" Spike Jones delivers a spectacularly tasteless "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth"; Eartha Kitt sings a hilariously sexy "Santa Baby" ("Hurry down the chimney tonight … Come and trim my Christmas tree"). The campier pieces are wonderfully tacky, a testament to the underrated weirdness of the ’50s (as Christmas music is often a window on its culture). They provide welcome relief from conventional Christmas pieties.