Classical composers have, by and large, fought shy of Christmas, preferring the meditative drama of Easter, and the theatricality of masses and obsequies. There are exceptions of course, most notably Bach and Berlioz. Then we come to the works of Britten, Vaughan Williams and Honegger that formed the basis of this concert. All three take carols as the starting point for their explorations of the festival's significance.

Britten's A Ceremony of Carols and Honegger's Christmas Cantata focus on the idea of Christmas as emblematic of new life and spiritual rebirth. Britten's Ceremony flashes forward to spring with its promise of natural regeneration and Christ's resurrection. For Honegger, terminally ill when he wrote the Cantata, the promise of new life is not of this earth: the jubilant music of Christmas, interweaving carols in jangling counterpoint, is heard from afar, before its worldliness finally fades.

The New London Children's Choir sang the Britten with finesse under their artistic director Ronald Corp, and later joined forces with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir for the Honegger, its complex textures flawlessly exposed by Vladimir Jurowski. It's a great, emotive work, hard to get through without a lump in your throat.

Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols is less effective. Pre-empting Honegger's contrapuntal methodology, it was novel in its day (1912), though it now strikes us as simplistic, which Jurowski's performance couldn't disguise, for all its flamboyance and nostalgia.

The one non-seasonal work was Britten's Double Concerto for Violin, Viola and Orchestra. An early piece, it was played with furious dexterity by violinist Pieter Schoeman and viola player Alexander Zemtsov.