Have yourself a merry little Christmas, and “Bah, humbug!” to Il Divo.

So here we are, the final Limelight of the year, yet also the first of 2016. An opportunity to celebrate the festive season, but also an incentive to offer a damn good holiday read, which is why this year we have added an extra 16 pages to create a bumper January/February issue. Our cover feature is the anticipated reveal of the Limelight 2015 Recording of the Year. The shortlist of 25 features 18 different labels, ranging from the big beasts (ABC Classics, Warner, DG, Decca and Sony) to the boutique (Obsidian, Bridge, Linn and Opera Rara). Not only that, some of the smallest fry carry off four of the top prizes.

Also inside you’ll find features on Shostakovich at the siege of Leningrad, Mozart’s feminine muses, the marriage of music and the movies, and even Andrew Ford’s new nursery rhymes project, which finds Teddy Tahu Rhodes turning his attentions from the Demon Barber of Fleet Street to his London neighbour the muffin man who, as every child knows, lives in Drury Lane.

Now, I’ve never had a problem with Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire but one of my Grinch-like observations of Christmas present is the tendency to shoehorn any old rubbish into the latest seasonal album. What, for example, does the otherwise lovely O Waly, Waly think it’s doing on Aled Jones’ recent offering? And how did Over the Rainbow sneak onto Il Divo’s cloying compilation? No, Christmas is for carols (and the odd mince pie), so by way of redress, some of our favourite musical and arts personalities have offered up their own choices.

Had there been room, I think I would have advocated The Oxen from Vaughan Williams’ vastly underrated cantata Hodie. The closing lines from Thomas Hardy’s intensely nostalgic poem always bring a lump to my throat: “Yet, I feel, if someone said on Christmas Eve, ‘Come; see the oxen kneel, in the lonely barton by yonder coomb our childhood used to know,’ I should go with him in the gloom, hoping it might be so.” For me, Hardy’s sentiment reminds us that Christmas is a time of reflection and not just pressies and Swarovski crystals.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas, and “Bah, humbug!” to Il Divo.

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