Christmas Music

Christmas is a special period, and demands special music. After a recent diet of Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Rachmaninov and Brahms, Bach's Goldberg Variations cleanse the auditory palate. And no one better to play them than Igor Levit. An hour or so of supreme music and masterly playing.

Bach's Mass in B minor is a core work of the classical world, well within the top half dozen musical works of all time. It has now been going strong for some 280 years and shows no sign of fading. For my ears, none better to conduct it than Otto Klemperer. His approach may not currently be fashionable, but Klemperer loved the music, he had a superb sense of form and structure, and his ability to ensure that all strands in the music are heard, pays heavy dividends in Bach. To ears accustomed to contemporary Bach performances, some of the music may appear slow – particularly the opening Kyrie. But Klemperer gives the music stature, greatness, and a nobility that escapes the current modernists. “Wunderbar!” Herr Bach would surely have exclaimed, listening to this performance. Klemperer assembled a first-class line-up of soloists: Agnes Giebel (the breach with Walter Legge spared us Elisabeth Schwarzkopf), Janet Baker, Nicolai Gedda, Hermann Prey and Franz Crass. Who could ask for better? Not a castrato, male alto, counter-tenor or boy soprano in sight. Great music in the hands of great musicians will long survive all the ex-choristers and harpsichordists who currently clutter the contemporary scene for “period performance”.

And that was my Christmas music making. After a short pause over the end of the year while I go off to France to eat as many oysters as I can; I'll be back in 2016.