To quote Sally Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas, “Christmas is getting all you can get while the getting is good.” This week, the getting is awfully good in the Philadelphia area, with a long list of concerts that conjure holiday cheer and a number of non-holiday offerings that promise to transport your ears to fascinating, far-flung realms.
Spotlight: Lyric Fest: Fascinating Rhythm — Saturday at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, Sunday at American Philosophical Society
For the last 22 years, Lyric Fest has done tremendous work to elevate the human voice in the Philadelphia area and beyond. But it’s the piano that gets extra shine in the group’s final concert of 2025, taking its star turn in the music of George Gershwin. Conceived by Logan Skelton, an eminent pianist and Gershwin scholar, Fascinating Rhythm attempts to re-create the composer’s own historic recordings, interspersed with spoken word snippets from Gershwin’s writings and letters.
Mezzo Devony Smith and baritone Grant Youngblood, two superb singers and Lyric Fest stalwarts, will accompany Skelton and pianist Laura Ward on this whirlwind tour through the Gershwin songbook. Hopefully you’ll leave one of next weekend’s performances with the same awestruck impression Serge Koussevitzky had watching Gershwin perform in 1937: “I caught myself thinking, in a dream state, that this was a delusion, the enchantment of this extraordinary being was too great to be real.”
Dec. 6 at 3 p.m., Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 625 Montgomery Avenue, Bryn Mawr, $30;
Dec. 7 at 3 p.m., Benjamin Franklin Hall, American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut Street, $30; tickets and information.
Anika Kildegaard & Daniel Schneider — Tuesday, American Philosophical Society
Art song and the Andes collide in this alluring Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital from soprano Anika Kildegaard, the winner of the Musical Fund Society’s 2024 Career Advancement Award. Joined by pianist Daniel Schneider, Kildegaard’s program showcases curatorial savvy alongside her virtuoso technique, sequencing selections from Olivier Messiaen’s rarely-performed 1945 cycle Harawi — a re-telling of the Tristan and Isolde myth in the Peruvian Andes — with Gabriela Lena Frank’s Cuatro Canciones Andinas (Four Andean Songs), and Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées.
Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m., Benjamin Franklin Hall, American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut Street, $27; tickets and information.
Ein Kind Geborn — Friday through Sunday, Various Locations
Michael Praetorius composed some of the most beautiful and enduring music for the Christmas season — including famous settings of the hymns Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming) and Quem pastores laudavere — while working in the German city of Wolfenbüttel in the early 1600s. For its annual holiday concert, Piffaro, Philadelphia’s one-of-a-kind Renaissance wind band, is joined by the New York City-based Tenet Vocal Artists to revel in the stunning harmonies of Praetorius and his contemporaries, capturing “the contemplative spirit and quiet joy of Christmas.”
Dec. 5 at 7:30 p.m., Church of the Holy Trinity, 1904 Walnut Street, $10-$49;
Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m., Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St Martins Lane, $25;
Dec. 7 at 3 p.m., Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1502 West 13th Street, Wilmington, DE, $10-$49; purchase tickets.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Marian Anderson Hall
From its pastoral evocation of The Shire to its harrowing portrayal of Mordor, Howard Shore’s Academy Award-winning score to the 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings is, in my humble opinion, the most effective feat of cinematic storytelling through sound on this side of Star Wars. Conductor Ludwig Wicki and The Philadelphia Orchestra, alongside the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Singing City Choir, will fill Marian Anderson Hall with the sweeping music of Middle Earth with these special screenings of Peter Jackson’s epic.
Dec. 5 at 7 p.m., Dec. 6 at 1 p.m. and Dec. 7 at 2 p.m., Marian Anderson Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, 300 South Broad Street, $55-$251; tickets and information.
George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker — Various Dates, Academy of Music
Audience members leaving the December 18, 1892 premiere of The Nutcracker at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre would have been shocked to learn that the ballet would become synonymous with Christmas around the world. The initial reaction to Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece — from critics (who called it everything from “insipid” to“unbearable”), the public, and even Tchaikovsky himself (he said he enjoyed its plot “not at all”) — was tepid at best, and it didn’t receive its American premiere until the 1940s. Much of The Nutcracker’s modern popularity can be ascribed to the choreographer George Balanchine, whose 1954 production has been performed annually by the Philadelphia Ballet for decades. From Dec. 5th through Dec. 31st, it offers 34 performances of Tchaikovsky’s Christmas classic at the Academy of Music.
Running Dec. 5 through 31, Academy of Music, 240 South Broad Street; for showtimes and prices, visit Philadelphia Ballet’s website.
Carols by Candlelight — Saturday, Church of the Holy Trinity
Conductor Donald Meineke and Choral Arts Philadelphia literally capture the warm glow of the holidays with their annual Carols by Candlelight performance. The concert includes more than a dozen Yuletide favorites set in the magnificent acoustic and tenebristic ambiance of Rittenhouse’s The Church of the Holy Trinity.
Dec. 6 at 4 and 7 p.m., Church of the Holy Trinity, 1904 Walnut Street, $17-$52; tickets and information.
