HELY-HUTCHINSON: Carol Symphony / STANDFORD / KELLY

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Of all the festivals in the Christian calendar Christmas has always attracted the most musical contributions from composers, albeit, in the main, vocal and choral. The exceptions have been seasonal seventeenth and eighteenth century concerti grossi, most notably that of Corelli, and the ‘pastoral symphonies’ in Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. The subsequent century, despite Charles Dickens’s virtual reinvention of the institution, bore little fruit other than the Santa Claus Symphony, by the American composer, William Henry Fry (Naxos 8.559057).