Christmas feels long gone by now, but it was, as ever, a time when past and present collide. Musically, they did so with some force when I heard, in the space of a single week, two very different Christmas oratorios: the venerable one we know and love by Bach, and a modern counterpart by that most eminent of living Catholic composers, James MacMillan.
The Bach had a gold-standard performance at London’s Smith Square from the elite professional choir Polyphony, and was a joy. MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio was not quite so easy to sum up. From simple, almost childlike elements suggestive of the tenderness of the Nativity story, it built into a sweeping Cecil B DeMille-type vision of the potency of the Incarnation – heavy with biblical awe of a kind that MacMillan knows how to deliver and that, saving the decorum of the concert hall, would force you to your knees.
