E-Mail This Article to a Friend Compliments of the season Holiday releases from Boston’s own BY JEFFREY GANTZ
	Finishing touch?   That’s what my essay "Finishing touches" in the November 25 Phoenix lacked: the last two lines. Metaphysically minded readers might have taken the open-ended "ending" as an example of form echoing content, and the final words, "might make you wonder," as an invitation to wonder, but the truth is as simple as a production glitch, for which we apologize. The final sentence should have read: "Listening to Leonard Bernstein or Klaus Tennstedt might make you wonder whether they rather than Mahler hit on the right answer." That is, it’s possible that Mahler’s interpreters have had a better idea of how his Sixth Symphony should go than he did. If he could hear his Andante played after the Scherzo as an Adagio, or his First Symphony with the Blumine movement restored, would he approve? We can only wonder; we’ll never know. _JG

Seasonal staples like Messiah and The Nutcracker and Christmas Revels and Holiday Pops are big moneymakers for their organizations, so no surprise that Boston’s classical-music organizations, like their pop counterparts, are hitting the market with holiday CDs. No box sets as yet (The Best of Christmas Revels? Holiday Pops’ Greatest Hits?), but this year we do have releases from the Pops, the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Ballet, Boston Baroque, the Boston Camerata, and Revels, and both the Pops and the Ballet, following Revels’ lead, have created their own house labels.

The Pops’ Sleigh Ride actually came out last year, but now it’s the orchestra’s second official "Boston Pops Recordings" album, following this summer’s America. Keith and company get off to a greased-runners start with Handel’s Fanfare for Christmas Day, Leroy Anderson’s "Sleigh Ride" (which Arthur Fiedler premiered in 1948), Ken Darby’s musical version of " ’Twas the Night Before Christmas," the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah, and Keith’s "own, very personal, nomination for ‘most beautiful piece in the classical holiday repertory,’ " Ottorino Respighi’s "The Adoration of the Magi," from his Botticelli Triptych. And the "Hill Folk" medley — "I Wonder As I Wander," "The Seven Joys of Mary," "Jesus, Rest Your Head," "Kentucky Wassail," "Go Tell It on the Mountain" — is both rousing and reverent. Then Renese King styles her way through "Do You Hear What I Hear" and Alfred Boe invites unflattering comparisons in "O Holy Night" and the album loses steam, going off into poppy fare — "I Love the Winter Weather," "Baby It’s Cold Outside," "Happy Holiday" — that gets even poppier as Keith and company take the bluesy/jazzy/Broadway-lite route. Bonus points, however, for Lockhart’s literate liner notes.

The Boston Ballet Orchestra’s Holidays in Boston (which joins The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, and Romeo and Juliet on the Boston Ballet Records label) combines three tracks from the Nutcracker disc — Tea (Chinese), Trepak (Russian), and the Sugar Plum Fairy’s celesta variation — with 14 selections from concerts the orchestra has performed at Copley Place, seasonal favorites ranging from European carols ("I Saw Three Ships," "Carol of the Bells," "Ding Dong Merrily on High") to American secular holiday fare ("Jingle Bells," "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"). There are a couple of sly inclusions: the album ends with "Sleigh Ride," taking on the Pops, and was "White Christmas" chosen before or after the Wang Center, which last year evicted the Ballet’s Nutcracker from the Wang Theatre in search of bigger holiday bucks, announced that this year it would be bringing in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas? Minor quibbles: the short measure (just over 40 minutes); the failure to identity track #7 beyond "French Carol (traditional)" (it’s the 17th-century carol "Il est né le divin Enfant"); the preponderance of numbers played by a (capable and enjoyable) brass quintet rather than the orchestra. When the orchestra does cut loose, on a medley of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "Silver Bells," and "I’ll Be Home for Christmas" and then "White Christmas," "Let It Snow!", and "Sleigh Ride," it sounds like the Pops playing the toasty warm arrangements of old.

In his liner note for All Is Bright (Avie), H&H music director Grant Llewellyn cites a 19th-century account of Christmas Eve that included cakes drawn hot from the oven, cider or beer exhilarating the spirits, and carols sung late into the night; he continues, "So in December last year I invited the Dinas Powys under-12 soccer team over for suitable refreshments followed by a quick rehearsal and then we all set off carolling." The mostly a cappella disc starts out with older works —Sweelinck’s "Hodie Christus natus est," the anonymous "There Is No Rose," Buxtehude’s "In dulci jubilo," Praetorius’s "Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming" — but the bulk is settings by 20th-century composers: William Walton, Herbert Howells, Eric Whitacre, William Mathias, Jennifer Higdon, Charles Ives, Daniel Pinkham, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson. Some may register the wistful skepticism of Thomas Hardy’s "The Oxen" in all those modern open harmonies, but it’s a Christmas disc with a difference, and it’s sung with warmth if not always a spirit that’s been exhilarated by beer, cider, or other appropriate refreshment.

Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque on their new Telarc disc (not due in stores till January 24, according to the press release) forgo carols in favor of two touchstones of the Baroque, Vivaldi’s Gloria and J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, with a period orchestra of two dozen and about as many singers. The performances are exalted but not exultant; Vivaldi’s opening "Gloria," in particular, ought to burst from the skies and shine ’round about us with the glory of the Lord, but here it just lights up like a Christmas-tree string. The liner note tells us that Pearlman has been hailed for his "fresh, buoyant interpretations"; I rarely hear that from Boston Baroque, but those who usually do will find it here.

The Holy Land of Jesus’s time was the meeting point of Greek and Roman, Arab and Hebrew, and much more, and the Boston Camerata reminds us of that on A Mediterranean Christmas: Songs of Celebration from Spain, Provence, Italy & the Middle East, 1200–1900 (Warner Classics), as Joel Cohen’s ensemble is joined by the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble for a Nativity journey in five stages: "The Sign of Judgement," "The Dawn Approaching," Star of the Day," "The Birth of Jesus," and "Mother and Child." It tilts toward Sephardic, Spanish, and mediæval, with four selections from the 13th-century court of Alfonso the Wise, king of Castille; but there’s also music from 12th- and 13th-century Occitan France (including a spoken text written by Folquet of Marseille, Dante’s favorite troubadour, for which the music has been lost), 13th-century Tuscany, 14th-century Catalonia, 17th-century Avignon, and more recent Andalucía and Istria, plus an Egyptian lullaby performed by Hayet Ayad. The "Christmas" sound of this disc is in the words rather than the music, so you need to pay attention; full texts and translations are provided.

Revels performances are so full of good will toward everybody, the performers sound as if they were singing about Christmas (or the celebration of the divine in humankind) even when they’re not. Rose and Thistle: English and Scottish Music from the Christmas Revels was recorded in First Parish Church in Brookline with a few live selections from 2003’s Scottish-themed Christmas Revels thrown in. As on every Revels disc, quirky treats abound: unusual variations on "Greensleeves"; an alleged composition by Henry VIII; an actual composition by Henry VIII; a Jacobite lament; the irrepressible Revels children with their pungent enunciation and not so innocent games. On "Ca’ the Yowes (Call the Ewes)," the line "He row’d me sweetly in his plaid" reminds us of everyday non-virgin births. Jayne Tankersley is affecting there and even more so in the finale, "Rorate cœli desuper" ("Drop Down Heavens from Above"), where she soars above the chorus like the heavenly host over the shepherds of Bethlehem. Rose and Thistle’s competition is mostly other Revels discs, and in fact the original, The Christmas Revels, is being offered at a special price, $11, in celebration of Revels’ 35th anniversary.