Tonight’s one-hour 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. 

Completing the concert 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.