Oy vey. Where to start. This is essentially painful – and I write that knowing that Neil Diamond is a genuinely nice guy and that he is now stricken with Parkinson’s. But there is no way round it: A Neil Diamond Christmas is an auditory assault.
Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings, Christmas albums…
GoldMund, Anna Veit: Mehr Oder Weniger Lametta – arrangements of Tchaikovsky, Bach, Humperdinck, Martin Luther, John Rutter (Solo Musica)
Just about the three toughest tricks to pull off in the theatre are making a musical, making a family show and making characters so charming that even the most cynical in the house are pulling for the little guy (or not so little in this case). So if it takes the armature of a blockbuster Hollywood movie to buttress the production, who cares?
This time last year, the moment I knew things were really bad was when the Dunedin Consort cancelled Messiah. All performances since the summer of 2020 had been online films, but Dunedin cancelled even their online Messiah because it would involve performers travelling from all corners of the UK to do it. Sure enough, a couple of days later, what we then called the “Kent variant” appeared, and the grim winter lockdown began.
“I wanna hear the music play, I wanna dance and laugh and sway” sings Norah Jones on “Christmas Calling”, the opening track of this her first festive outing, “I wanna happy holiday for Christmas”. Doubtless when she recorded I Dream of Christmas, all that seemed easily possible, along with a smooch under the mistletoe. Now much of the world faces not a white Christmas but possibly another Covid Christmas – for many people sadly “a blue Christmas without you”, as the old chestnut has it.
As we ride towards the holiday break on our magic reindeer, it’s time for one last theartsdesk on Vinyl, a seasonal special that, if you scroll down, contains all the usual up-to-date music reviews but, before that, takes a look at Yuletide-themed releases, reissues and heritage fare that might make great presents. As ever, all musical life newly pressed to plastic is here. Dive in.
VINYL OF THE FESTIVE SEASON
Time, place and performers gave this performance of Berlioz’s typically original “Sacred Trilogy” a special significance. Nothing in it is more striking, in choice of text and the music to illustrate it, than the scene where Hebrew refugees Mary, Joseph and their child arrive in Egyptian Sais and are rejected by two heartless households before a kind Ishmaelite receives them.
Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams has always had a literary bent. This doesn’t just manifest in overt ways, like writing a concept album about Sylvia Plath in 2015’s Hypoxia, but in perfectly potted narratives, microscopically brilliant turns of phrase, and even titles that make you double-take going all the way back to 1999’s “Dog Without Wings”.
Michael Praetorius: Es is ein Ros Dresdner Kammerchor/Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus)