The Full Works Concert at Christmas with Lucy Coward

Classic FM is truly the home of Christmas music - join Lucy Coward and be immersed in the sounds of the season.

This week the Full Works Concert is decked with boughs of holly and a mix of fantastic festive melodies. And as 2015 saw the death of the great Sir David Willcocks, to close each of these Full Works Concerts, Lucy Coward features one of Sir David’s famous carol arrangements taken from a new release by the award-winning Saint Michael’s Singers.

Wednesday 23 December 2015, 8pm

In the last of three festive programmes, Lucy Coward presents a couple of wintry moments from two operas: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Christmas Eve and Offenbach’s A Trip to the Moon. If the latter title has you thinking of a certain Christmas TV advert airing this year, then you might like Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter narrating The Night Before Christmas, which also features tonight. Another highlight is a fantastic recording of soprano Emma Kirkby singing Scarlatti’s Pastoral Cantata for the Birth of our Saviour.

Anderson: A Christmas Festival
Dallas Wind Symphony/Jerry Junkin
Rimsky-Korsakov: Christmas Eve, Suite
Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra/Loris Tjeknavorian
The Night Before Christmas
Jim Carter/Budapest City Orchestra/John Lunn
Hely-Hutchinson: A Carol Symphony
City Prague Philharmonic Orchestra/Gavin Sutherland
Scarlatti: Pastoral Cantata for the Birth of our Saviour
Emma Kirkby/London Baroque/Charles Medlam
Offenbach: Ballet of the Snowflakes            
Les Musciens du Louvre/Marc Minkowski
Kelly: Improvisations on Christmas Carols
City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra/Gavin Sutherland
Gauntlett, arr. Willcocks: Once in Royal David’s City
Saint Michael’s Singers/Kerry Beaumont/Paul Leddington Wright