Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How are you listening to your Christmas Music?

The only recording I have of Christophers is a BBC Music recording of Messiah. And when it comes to listening to that work, I always turn to my recording with Trevor Pinnock (Auger, von Otter, Chance, Crook, Tomlinson) and the English Concert.

Regards,

Good point !!!!!

But compared to Thomas Beecham's all out Verdian assault, Pinnock sounds almost prim and proper.

Last Christmas, I went to a concert in the Royal Festival Hall in London while The Sixteen were giving a Christmas concert next door in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I heard that after their concert, they would be singing carols in the foyer, so I popped into the QEH after my concert to hear them - people gathered around as they sang for half an hour several well-known carols. The audience also joined in, with Christophers's encouragement, and we all had a great time.

Try listening to NPR - they've been interspersing choice pieces of underplayed Christmas music with their regular classical fare. Nice mix.

Watched some of Michael Buble last nite. Nice voice, but I couldn't stand watching him. So many phony 'stage presence' smiles and cocking his head. The Washington Christmas was a little better.

Anything else to recommend for watching?

BTW, I guess I don't get too tired of Xmas music since I don't hit the malls, and usually only listen to NPR so I don't get the old ho hum stuff (thank goodness!) I like that the station mentioned above plays the more unusual and hardly repeats.

Haven't been able to get past that pop sounding Christmas. Although, I'd really love to get into some of the more heavier stuff you'd find from a more classical period.

Perhaps I could get some suggestions for this "heavier stuff" here. Whenever I think of great Christmas music, I think of Handel's "Messiah." This isn't written for piano, but that's the style I'd like to go for. Any suggestions?

If you look at the last piece in this collection by Alkan, you'll find that it is a transcription of the Pastorale (Pifa) from Handel's Messiah. The listings at IMSLP give no indication that it exists, but it does.

I've been listening some carols (and the christmas oratorio) in youtube. I've also been playing the arrangements I made for school (I actually think they're quite good). I've tried to avoid the pop stuff.

Apart from my suggestions above of the Christmas Oratorios by Bach and Saint-Saëns (a very charming piece with prominent use of harp), there's also Corelli's Christmas Concerto and Berlioz's L'enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ) which contains the famous 'Shepherd's Farewell', often sung by itself as a carol.

I went ahead and purchased it on Itunes. I'm a little disappointed that he mixed 'O Holy Night' with Chopin's fantasie impromptu. Nice album overall, though.