Click here to listen to our 16 chosen tracks on Spotify, each of which comes with the insights from the RPS Team below.

1. Judith Weir Illuminare Jerusalem

An early treasure in Sir Stephen Cleobury’s extraordinary legacy of commissioned works for A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, this 1985 carol is by Judith Weir who, as Master of the King’s Music, received RPS Honorary Membership from His Majesty the King earlier this year. She sets a medieval Scots text from an anonymous 15th-century manuscript for chorus and organ. Immediately striking, it arrests the listener with its resounding message of light and joy.

2. Fanny Mendelssohn December

It's Christmas Day in 1841 and Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn) has a special gift for her husband: 12 piano miniatures each representing a month of the year. The last fittingly opens with fistfuls of flurrying quavers, surely evoking a blizzard. The snowdrifts eventually ease and a Lutheran hymn ‘From heaven high I come to you’ gently swells. Here one pictures a community coming together out of the cold.

3. Ēriks Ešenvalds Stars

Setting the poem by Sara Teasdale of the same name, Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds creates this atmospheric piece from the perspective of someone looking at the night sky, almost becoming overwhelmed by the majesty and constancy of the natural world. While describing an isolate experience, there’s a real sense of company and comfort in the landscape. Ēriks intensifies the text through soaring dynamics and harmonies to create a resonant, moving experience.

4. Ernest Bloch Winter from Hiver-Printemps

Written in 1905 and revised almost 30 years later, Hiver-Printemps (meaning ‘Winter-Spring’) is an evocative set of two symphonic poems. In the first of these, Bloch expertly uses the orchestra to depict a wintry landscape, with the cor anglais providing a haunting melody to open and close the piece. This is the perfect piece to listen to when it’s snowing outside, but you’re curled up indoors with a good book and a cup of tea.

5. Alexander Campkin The Crimson Sun

There is an understated flair to this beautiful carol, which has a tempo marking of ‘bright and cold midnight’, taken from the text of the first verse, written by Reverend George P. Grantham, who became vicar of Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire, from 1881. Alexander Campkin’s verse gently flows with hushed anticipation into a radiant, cascading chorus, which one can imagine ringing out at midnight.

6. Augusta Holmès Three Angels Came This Evening

Born in 1847, Augusta Holmès is a name we should all know better. As women were not permitted to study at the Paris Conservatoire, she took private lessons with César Franck. She wrote a wealth of big orchestral, operatic and choral works yet deserving a revival, but her gift as melodist is evident in this little jewel from 1884. Between them, a soprano, cello and harp radiate a hallowed glow.

7. Yshani Perinpanayagam In Bethlehem Above

Pianist, music director and composer Yshani Perinpanayagam brings fresh voice to the Christmas story with her own lyrics conveying warmth and wonder. Rising melodies and uplifting harmonies paint a vivid picture in this short but perfectly formed carol which has fast become a favourite with choirs over the last few years.

8. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Polonaise from Christmas Eve

Who knew that Rimsky-Korsakov wrote an entire opera entitled Christmas Eve? It’s your everyday tale of a blacksmith from a Ukrainian village who seeks the Devil’s help to steal the Tsarina’s golden slippers to give to his beloved. The Polonaise, capturing the splendour of the Tsarina’s palace, giddily builds and builds, like an overflowing festive glass of fizz.

9. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Hodie Christus natus est

Be transported to early 17th-century Amsterdam, where the Dutch composer, organist and influential teacher Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was resident at the Oude Kerk throughout his career. What better way to wake up the household on Christmas morning than with this joyful and characterful five-part motet? Singers feeling brave might even like to try it themselves with this edition by John Rutter, but we recommend a thorough warm-up first!

10. Thomas Adès The Fayrfax Carol

Followers of Thomas Adès might think first of his operatic, orchestral or chamber works, but this carol stands out with its contrasting lilting, delicate harmonies and solo voices with more clamorous passages. Written for A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge in 1997, the anonymous Tudor text is full of imagery – part-dream, part-lullaby – and looks ahead to Passiontide.

11. J. S. Bach Christen, ätzet diesen Tag

There’s no shortage of music by J. S. Bach at Christmas, and the opening chorus of this cantata for Christmas Day is particularly special. Written for the morning service on Christmas Day, 1723 – Bach’s first Christmas in Leipzig – the brilliance of the opening fanfare with four trumpets and timpani immediately captures a joyful and celebratory feel. We imagine the wonder of a congregation hearing this at the Thomaskirche on a snowy Christmas morning.

12. Caroline Shaw Root from The Evergreen

Written in collaboration with and played by the Attaca Quartet, The Evergreen traces the structure and ecosystem of a tree. An unhurried and grounded final movement captures a reassuring sense of stability, with an anchored cello melody providing a foundation from which the other instruments’ lines are safe to grow. This makes us think of an unchanging forest of pine trees and their resilience throughout the year.

13. Florence Price Song for Snow

A setting of Elizabeth Coatsworth’s poem of the same name, Florence Price’s Song for Snow delicately captures a sparse but beautiful landscape where ‘the earth is lighter than the sky’. Soft descending melodies and a staccato piano accompaniment perfectly reflect the falling snow and ‘icily sweet sleigh-bells’.

14. Benjamin Britten The Christmas Party from Paul Bunyan

‘Another slice of turkey, another slice of ham! I’ll feel sick tomorrow, but I won’t give a damn!’ So begins the rollicking Christmas feast that concludes Benjamin Britten and W. H. Auden’s youthful operetta Paul Bunyan. Written in his twenties, it’s Britten at his most ebullient. Where else might you hear an opera chorus cheerfully bellow ‘I think there’s some plum pudding! Would you pass the cheese?’

15. Errollyn Wallen Peace on Earth

Deceptively simple, there is immense beauty in Errollyn Wallen’s Peace on Earth, a setting of her own words which look for hope, light and peace in a troubled world. A recent commission for King’s College’s A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, unison voices are slowly traced over a twinkling, turning organ ostinato – the effect is both haunting and mesmerising.

16. Oliver Knussen Flourish with Fireworks

Boom! On one hand, Oliver Knussen’s 1988 fanfare is extrovert orchestral impressionism: rocketing bursts of colour, fit for any celebration. On the other hand, it’s an intricate puzzle: the monograms of its dedicatees, the LSO (London Symphony Orchestra) and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) are musically codified in two 3-note refrains (A-E flat-G and E-B-B) that flash, flicker and fuse throughout.

If you’ve enjoyed listening to this playlist, let us know. There may be a track it’s reminded you of, that you’d like to share with us in return. We’d be pleased to pass it on. Do get in touch with us at members@philharmonicsociety.uk.