The Auckland Philharmonia's annual 'Celebrate Christmas' concert is a hugely popular regular feature of the festive concert season. This year they are joined by tenor Frederick Jones, back briefly from the UK, and their constant companions at this event: The Graduate Choir New Zealand. Leonard Weiss conducts.
The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Celebrate Christmas concert in Holy Trinity Cathedral. Photo: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
They bring us a feast of festive music – old favourites, one or two things that you’ve not heard before maybe, ancient, modern, voices, orchestra ... all in celebration of this special time of year. Christian yes, but welcoming in everybody in a spirit of coming together in friendship, family and kindness.
Samuel COLERIDGE TAYLOR: Christmas Overture
Coleridge Taylor wrote the music originally as incidental music for a fairy tale play by Alfred Noyes and this version appeared posthumously in 1925 in an arrangement by Sydney Barnes. And ... as you’ll hear ... it’s a pot-pourri of some favourite carols. Perfect way to get things underway.
TRADITIONAL arr Tom Rainey: Coventry Carol
We’ll get to more glad tidings further on, but for the moment we dwell on Herod’s massacre of the innocents – the killing of all infant boys under two in the vicinity of Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth as told in the Gospel of St Matthew.
The Matthew text is set in 'The Coventry Carol' which was part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors – traditionally performed in the English Midlands city.
Frederick Jones is the soloist.
Eric WHITACRE: Lux Nova
This is a reworking of Whitacre's earlier, very popular work Lux aurumque. The text is a translation into Latin by Charles Anthony Silvestri of poetry by Edward Esch:
Light / warm and heavy as pure gold / and the angels sing softly / to the newborn babe.
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Fantasia on Greensleeves
A perennial favourite – it doesn’t have much to do with Christmas in its original lyrics, but the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ has been used for a number of carols over the centuries, so inclusion in a Christmas concert is not inappropriate.
Originally written for the composer’s Shakespeare-inspired opera Sir John in Love, it was later orchestrated by Ralph Greaves under Vaughan Williams’ supervision. And it’s not all ‘Greensleeves’ either … the middle section is a setting of the melody 'Lovely Joan'.
TRADITIONAL arr John Rutter: The Holly and the Ivy
SUK: Playing at Swans and Peacocks, from Fairy-tale Op 16
Czech composer Josef Suk’s Fairy Tale is a suite of music he wrote for the play Radúz and Mahulena, which was a kind of Romeo and Juliet story but set in a magical fairy-tale kingdom. The orchestra plays one of the movements from the suite: ‘Playing at Swans and Peacocks’.
TRADITIONAL arr David Willcocks: O Come All Ye Faithful
A chance for the audience to join in.
Deborah CHEETHAM FRAILLON: Christmas with you
The Auckland Philharmonia always manages to turn up something new for their annual Celebrate Christmas concert. Deborah Cheetham Fraillon of the Yorta Yorta people is an Australian soprano, composer, and Professor of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Jan SWEELINCK arr Michel Rondeau: Hodie Christus natus est
Gerald FINZI: Wonder, from Dies Natalis
The text of this movement from the cantata Dies Natalis, a setting of the 17th-century mystical poet Thomas Traherne, expresses the wonder of the divine child at the world he’s emerged into.
Frederick Jones sings.
John RUTTER: Star Carol
John Rutter is one of the best loved and most prolific choral composers and he has a specialty in writing music for Christmas. Here’s his joyous and sparkling Star Carol ... a setting of his own text:
Sing this night, for a boy is born in Bethlehem,
Christ our Lord in a lowly manger lies;
Bring your gifts, come and worship at his cradle,
Hurry to Bethlehem and see the son of Mary!
Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Polonaise, from Christmas Eve
Rimsky-Korsakov’s not-often-heard opera Christmas Eve, based on old Slavic sagas and fairy tales, is more pagan than Christian in its subject matter. The Polonaise comes from the scene in which the hero Vakula gets an audience with the Tsarina in St Petersburg to ask for a pair of her slippers to take back to the woman he loves.
George Frederick HANDEL: Messiah, excerpts
Frederick Jones is the soloist in the accompanied recitative, ‘Comfort ye’, followed by the aria ‘Ev’ry Valley shall be Exalted’.
Then the Graduate Choir sing ‘And the Glory of the Lord’, ‘For unto us a child is born’, and the Hallelujah Chorus.
Franz GRUBER arr Terence Maskell: Silent Night
The traditional and serene ending for the APO's Celebrate Christmas concert.
Recorded by RNZ Concert in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, 16 December 2023
Producer: Tim Dodd
Enginerr: Adrian Hollay
