In December, concert halls and churches ring with baroque music, especially Handel’s. But this year along with the composer’s ubiquitous Messiah, the American Symphony Orchestra lovingly revived his oratorio Judas Maccabaeus for Hanukkah, and the English Concert’s annual visit brought an unusually gripping Rodelinda to Carnegie Hall, where the Orchestra of St. Luke’s embraced Bach with a rare complete Weihnachtsoratorium.

Though Messiah is most often heard at Christmas, it rightly should be performed near Easter. However, one is more likely to encounter Bach at Easter when his two great Passions dominate, yet his lovely Christmas Oratorio is regularly offered. The Oratorio is made up of six cantatas: one each for the first three days of Christmas, followed by one for the first Sunday after the New Year and for the Feasts of Christ’s Circumcision and the Epiphany. Each cantata lasts twenty to thirty minutes and consists of choruses, chorales, arias and duets and, like the Passions, is narrated by a tenor Evangelist.

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The Orchestra of St. Luke’s well-known devotion to Bach includes an annual June festival dedicated to the composer; therefore, the excellence of its Christmas Oratorio on December 4 under Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie came as no surprise. In addition to four fine vocal soloists, the concert featured La Chapelle de Québec, the superb thirty-member Canadian chorus founded by Labadie nearly forty years ago. Effortlessly filling Carnegie’s large auditorium, it sang with exemplary precision and clarity accompanied by the alertly vivid orchestra. Particularly outstanding in their frequent obbligati were concertmaster Krista Bennion Feeney and first oboist Melanie Field.

Andrew Hajj with his brightly candid tenor excelled as the Evangelist though the fiendishly challenging coloratura of his arias once or twice threatened to elude his grasp. Joshua Hopkins brought a vigorously forthright baritone to his many duties, while the enveloping warmth of Avery........

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