The exuberant opening of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio – kettle drums, woodwind trills, a skittering of strings, then a glorious trumpet flourish – lifts any heart, or should. “Rejoice, celebrate”, declaims the chorus, with an urgent directive to abandon despair, banish lamentation and sing. Good spiritual advice whether you do or do not do festive. The piece, written in 1734, is more than it seems: six cantatas intended for separate performance from Christmas Day to Epiphany, rather than one work; and reflections on, rather than a simple narrative telling of the Christmas story. Shepherds and angels, manger and child, wise men and star are all there, but they offer a wider context for contemplation, with a particularly virulent attack on the lies and cunning of the ruling King Herod.

Performing the four best-known cantatas (all six is a long night out), the Feinstein Ensemble and London Bach Singers showed, triumphantly, the validity of small-scale Bach. Having a single singer and instrumentalist to a part is only one way of doing this music, but in the intimate setting of Kings Place it was ideal. The excellent soloists – soprano Faye Newton, countertenor Tim Travers Brown, tenor Charles Daniels and bass Ben Davies – were also the chorus. Four voices, here, were as good as 40. Whether soaring above, or integrating with the players in perfect balance, they delivered text and music with vital clarity.

The music, perhaps less well known than Bach’s Easter passions, overflows with treasures: the sensuous “sleep” aria (Schlafe, mein Liebster) for alto; the tenor’s ecstatic “Happy shepherds” (Frohe Hirten); the duet for soprano and bass in the third cantata on the theme of compassion, here exquisitely sung by Newton and Davies. Martin Feinstein, directing from the flute, drew a rich, at times remarkable, range of colours and timbres from his 16 period instrument players. Bach’s music is often described as being, in essence, about dance. You only had to watch the double bass player, Rosie Moon, so free and expressive – apologies for singling her out from the deserving many, but she was in my immediate sight line – to understand what is meant.

Praise, briefly, too, for another venue that finds the best of seasonal music every year. St John’s Smith Square’s 34th Christmas festival matches its own high standards, with top performers. I managed to hear La Nativité du Seigneur (1935), Messiaen’s epic, nine-movement, hour-long organ work encompassing everything from birdsong to dancing angels. The staggering wizardry of organist David Titterington, spanning honeyed nocturne and fortissimo terror, helped us glimpse Messiaen’s vision of paradise. The festival has its own Christmas Oratorio tonight (conductor, Stephen Layton) with, as it were, a Messiah arriving tomorrow.

This year’s London contemporary music festival was subtitled “Witchy Methodologies”. Interpret that phrase as you like, but the main idea, as stated, was the revival of disruptive practices: ritual, doubling, gossip and eavesdropping. What does that mean in relation to music? You can rely on LCMF, now seven years old and in its eighth edition, to offer the most outlandish, thought-provoking and irregular answers. The large, dedicated crowd no longer seems surprised at having to traipse down three levels below Marylebone Road – LCMF’s home is Ambika P3, a vast, former concrete construction hall – to encounter the most experimental in music and performance art.

Last week we arrived to a backdrop of prolonged orgasmic exhalations coming from under a false, ramped floor. Performed by the artist Rowland Hill, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972) was first heard in a New York gallery and intended as “an infamous critique of 70s American state surveillance”. In practice it felt like a cross between Je t’aime… moi non plus (1969) without the tunes and with only one person, and a squelchy episode of On Your Farm.Together with gossip-themed sound poetry from Holly Pester, and the sparky Laughter Studies 6 by Louis D’Heudieres (with instructions via headphones fed to the performers), there was a film, Rubber Coated Steel (2016), by the artist and “forensic audio analyst” Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

To say the premieres by Michael Finnissy and Cassandra Miller were more “classical” is an inadequate shorthand: they used conventional concert instruments but in other respects were just as radical. Finnissy’s Hammerklavier for piano and film, an LCMF commission performed by Zubin Kanga, drew on a legendary performance of Beethoven’s Sonata Op 106 by the Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Grainy monochrome images of a keyboard flashed and spattered on the screen (film by Adam de la Cour), interlaced with visions of vintage gay erotica. Finnissy’s detailed score, dense yet shimmering, seemed to eavesdrop on Beethoven’s masterpiece, a ghost in the machine.

The discovery of the UK-based Canadian Miller – who is well established but somehow missed by me – made a joyful end to 2019’s listening. Her Duet for Cello and Orchestra (2015) was given its English premiere by cellist Anton Lukoszevieze and the LCMF Orchestra, winningly conducted by Jack Sheen. Rising out of the simplest, two-note cello motif, snatches of an Italian song were catapulted round the orchestra, with volleys of brass like cries and whispers of Verdi or Janáček or a town band. It was generous, engaging and unlike anything else. You can’t ask more of music.

Star ratings (out of five)
Christmas Oratorio ★★★★
34th Christmas festival ★★★★★
LCMF ★★★★