Tonight’s programme celebrates Christmas through the elegance and brilliance of the Baroque era, with a selection of beautifully crafted festive masterpieces.

Opening the programme is the overture from Handel’s Messiah, whose opening section centres on the prophecy and birth of Christ, making it one of the defining sounds of the Christmas repertoire. Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, written “for the night of Christmas”, and Torelli’s Christmas Concerto both capture the spirit of Christmas night, with music that suggests the shepherds of the Nativity and the stillness of the scene.

Completing the programme is Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a dazzling set of concertos that remains one of the most famous and vivid works in all classical music. Each concerto paints a different season in sound, drawing on accompanying poems — possibly written by Vivaldi himself — to bring the natural world vividly to life. Across the four concertos, Vivaldi conjures birdsong and buzzing flies, harvest celebrations, barking dogs, summer storms and winter ice.