71. A Stockingfull of Festive Faves.

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Do you think that classical music is not for you and you don't know where to start? Or maybe you're a fan already and would welcome a fresh approach. You've come to the right place. Perfect pitch is for everyone, beginners or experts, whatever your age. Lend Nick Haley Haptins in your ears for his weekly dose of classical music that will enrich your life.

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The festive season is well and truly underway. And so I'm going to concentrate on a small stocking full of Christmas offerings this week and something rather predictable next. These are just a few personal favorites made up of the familiar and made less familiar. With the exception of one all of the composers have featured in the podcast before. So I'm not going to post too much comment. Just a very briefly set of introduction to enjoy the music. I have recently been asked to join the advisory council of this orchestra, which is a great thrill for me because they are the most fantastic group of musicians who make a very distinctive sound. Warm, daring, and adventurous all in one. I am not on their payroll, and I have not been asked to give them a plug, but I do so with huge enthusiasm. I urge you to go to their concert in the Royal Festival Hall, where you can see and hear for yourself the tension and excitement which comes with a live performance in a broad range of music. They will feature twice more in today's podcast, but here they are in an overture to the micro suite conducted by Mary Sans. It was originally written to accompany a lighthearted fairy drama by Alfred Noise called The Forest of Wild Time, but it's a charming collection of cows in an orchestral format. Unto Us A Child Is Born is sung here by the London Symphony Chorus, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davis.

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The sun is being the one who should be so charged for such a side does the child is born does the child is born does the child is born does the child is born to us the common shabby shabby upon this one and shame upon the song and his baby shaken one might be done in the day something thousands and so the comments that sound like it's gonna be the time but then just the girl of the time, the grammar of the man something.

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Runsky Korsakov's Christmas Eve Suite is a concoction formed out of his four-act opera, written in the mid-1890s and set in a snow-covered area of Decanko in Ukraine. We don't have time to play it all, but this is the richly orchestrated Polonaise section, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jarovsky in a live performance in 2013. I've yet to hear it sound. Better than by Gerald Finlay, accompanied in this recording by the chorus and orchestra of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner.

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And this for quest of the travestry, King of the Jews. The star shines out with a steadfast face. And then in worship they bend the hands.

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He wrote a sleigh ride from which this is the two-minute allegretto, and it's really rather silly, but only goes to prove the enormous gulf between him and his offspring. And yet it does contain obvious references to a sleigh ride in the cracking of a whip, as well as Christmases with jingles and so on. It's played here by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra conducted by Janosch Rolla. By the way, the German for sleigh ride is a schlittent art. Let's give thanks for one moment for the letter L. Berlioz's oratorio, L'Enfance du Christ, The Childhood of Christ, has this lovely passage of the shepherds' farewell as they wish the Holy Family a safe journey on the flight to Egypt. Colin Davis was probably the best champion and interpreter of Berlioz's music. Here he is with a chorus and orchestra of the London Symphony Orchestra. Tchaikovsky's not cracking sweet. And the final moment of that work of Valphis de Fleur, Althus of the Flowers. I'm turning once more to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, this time conducted by Vernon Hanley.

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