Holiday Concerts By Early Music Now, Bel Canto Chorus

The great thingabout Classical Music around the holidays is that there is just so much of itavailable, and none need fall into the dreaded schmaltz category (all too easyto do at Christmastime). Indeed, two local ensembles avoid the cheap stuff andgo right for the luxuries of Christmas past.

Early Music Now has brought Anonymous 4 back to Milwaukee for theirholiday-themed concert titled “The Cherry Tree.” As Anonymous 4’s MarshaGenensky and Susan Hellauer explain, “TheCherry Tree Carol…has flourished in oral tradition through the centuriesand is still widely sung in both Americaand the British Isles.” The carol’s story isone in which “Joseph doubts the divine origin of Mary’s pregnancy; Jesus thenmiraculously speaks from within Mary’s womb, causing a cherry tree to bend andoffer his mother its fruit.” The carol’s origins are in medieval Britain, andAnonymous 4 chose it as the central theme of their program, blending itas theysaywith “medieval ancestors of that story and other medieval British carolsand British-rooted American songs and hymns,” all sung in their original Latinor Middle English. The four sections of the concert program variously includecarols, folk hymns, ballads andsequences. Among these are the 15th-century Lullay My Child: This EnderNithgt, Qui Creavit Celum (a carol of the nuns of Chester),as well as Prophetarum Presignata and Salve Mater Misericordiefrom 14th-century Ireland.

At the Chapel of St. Joseph Center on Dec.12.

The Bel CantoChorus’ holiday concert, “Christmas in the Basilica,” features musicreaching as far back as the Renaissance. The Bel Canto Chorus, Bel Canto BoyChoir, Alleluia Ringers and organist John Behnke join forces for a program ofcarols, songs and hymns, including the serenely beautiful motet O MagnumMysterium by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), Personent Hodie byGustav Holst (1874-1934) and the immortal Silent Night by Franz Gruber(1787-1863). The concert opens with A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 byBenjamin Britten (1913-76), composed as he voyaged by sea from America to England in 1942, and a perennialYuletide favorite in his native country.

One of thetraditional hymns on the Bel Canto program is The Holly and the Ivy, thechorus of which perhaps best sums up all this exquisite holiday fare: “Oh therising of the Sun, and the running of the deer, the playing of the merry organ,sweet singing in the choir.”

At St. Josaphat Basilicaon Dec. 12-13.