Of all the many musical holiday traditions that grace the Christmas season in Chestnut Hill, none has become a more cherished event that the Mendelssohn Chorus’ annual “A Feast of Carols.” The concert is so popular that its program must be performed twice to accommodate the large audiences that wish to hear it.

This year’s installment will be conducted by the choir’s artistic director, Dominick DiOrio. It will be performed Saturday, Dec. 13, at 2 and 5 p.m. in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 22 East Chestnut Hill Ave. The program will include the world premiere of a new work by Philadelphia-born composer Rex Isenberg entitled “Great Miracles,” along with a sensitive mix of anthems and carols with audience participation.

The concerts will include the highly-anticipated “Postcard Carols” segment, one of DiOrio’s most compelling innovations. DiOrio composes new music for “Postcard Carols,” works that donors commission a year earlier to celebrate their loved ones, while also lending financial support to the chorus. Each composition receives its world premiere at the concert.

St. Paul’s Church is one of the most nearly perfect venues for concerts performed by large choruses, often accompanied by organ and brass quintet. The consort of brass instruments from trumpet down to tuba have a special holiday ring to them, often recalling scenes from film productions of Charles Dickens’ immortal “A Christmas Carol.”

And then there’s the Church’s magnificent Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ – recently and lovingly restored, and during “A Feast of Carols” to be played by the parish’s music director, Andrew Kotylo. Such expert hands guarantee it to be the “concert to be remembered” of the 2025 Christmas season.

For more information, visit mcchorus.org.

Piano Recital at St. Martin’s

The Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Chestnut Hill, presented pianist James Palmer in recital Sunday afternoon, Nov. 16. The performance drew an enthusiastic audience that heard the young virtuoso deliver compelling renditions of works by Orlando di Lasso, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Alexander Scriabin, Franz Liszt, and Giuseppe Verdi through an arrangement by the pianist, himself.

Anyone who regularly attends piano recitals is grateful to encounter even one unusual selection in a program. To encounter two is reassuring — and a little terrifying. Perhaps they’re unusual because they aren’t very good. But to encounter two works outside the normal canon of the repertoire and to find them both worthwhile works verges on a miracle.

Then again, where better to encounter a miracle than in a church?

The first of Palmer’s two oddities was Peter Philips’ arrangement of the Renaissance di Lasso’s “Le Rossignol doux et gratieux.” Originally played on either a virginal or clavichord – early predecessors of the modern piano – Palmer used its graceful scales and charming turns of phrases to set the stage for Mozart’s final piano sonata, that in D major, K. 576, composed in 1789, only two years before his death at the age of 35.

Palmer caught the developmental drama of the first movement, the singing lyricism of the second and the courtly impishness of the third in playing that was technically immaculate and interpretively focused. He consistently employed a tone that was bright yet expressive.

Smack in the middle of the roster was Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5, Opus 53. Written in 1908, it revealed the composer’s loosening the tethers of major/minor tonality in favor of a freeform atonality that challenged the listener to keep up with his harmonic developments, which were often projected through shimmering textures never found in anyone else’s piano music. Palmer made its daunting digital challenges seem like child’s play as he created Scriabin’s unique sound world.

Although one might accuse Liszt of pandering to the most obvious musical cliches in “Venezia e Napoli,” Palmer played its three movements with splashes of color that overcame any and all reservations of discreet good taste. And he gave his own arrangement of Princess Eboli’s aria, “O Don Fatale,” from Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” a sterling reading.

AVA’s ‘Le nozze’

The Academy of Vocal Arts opened its 2025-26 season of fully-staged operas, Saturday, Nov. 8, with a brilliant mounting of Mozart’s “Le nozze di Figaro” (The Marriage of Figaro). Performances continue through Tuesday, Dec. 2.

With conductor Joseph Colaneri and stage director Tara Faircloth in charge of AVA’s roster of incredibly talented young singers/actors, the old phrase, “a good time was had by all,” was definitely the case Nov. 15. Mozart’s setting of Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretti on Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais’ original play, is (to my ears) the greatest opera ever composed. AVA’s production gave Mozart’s genius all that it deserves.

Bass-baritone Nan Wang caught the bottomless well of invention of the title role and sang with beauty and drama. Soprano Beautiful Sheriff was a spikey Suzanna. Mezzo Julianna Smith was a mischievous Cherubino. Anna Thompson sang with the melting beauty of tone of the young Renata Tebaldi (the beloved “Queen of Sopranos”) as the heartbroken Countess Rosina. And baritone Geoffrey Schmelzer was a convincingly sleezy Count.

Visit avaopera.org for more information about the remainder of the season.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.