Christmas, and the English choral tradition is alive and well in the hands of William Vann and the voices of the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. A Christmas Fantasia is their third album of Christmas carols for the Albion label (‘A Vaughan Williams Christmas’ from 2018 and 2021’s ‘An Oxford Christmas’ are the others), all the chosen songs composed either by friends or students of Vaughan Williams, or by RVW himself (the exception being William Vann’s own Carol). Three of the eight RVW items are from his Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire collection; elsewhere we have works by Howells, Ireland, Rebecca Clarke, Maconchy, Finzi, Holst (his Christmas Day ‘choral fantasy on old carols’) and ending with Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols, at 11'28" the longest item by some distance. Jamie Andrews provides discreet organ accompaniment for seven of the 17 tracks. There is a richness and depth to the recording that I found most appealing – no wishy-washy cathedral acoustic for this choir – the whole carefully curated disc enhanced by a superbly produced booklet.

Best Christmas Booklet Cover award goes to In Dulci Jubilo from the Windsbacher Knabenchor. The choir, based in the Bavarian town of Windsbach, is comprised of approximately 80 boys and young men aged 9‑19 years, who make up the SATB choir. Here they are joined by members of Lautten Compagney Berlin, which specialises in early and Baroque music. Thus the programme mixes a cappella and purely instrumental tracks with accompanied choral works. The 21 numbers span the Middle Ages to the 20th century, blending beloved English classics such as Greensleeves and Forest Green (the folk tune to which we sing ‘O little town of Bethlehem’) with vibrant Latin American pieces showcasing a variety of musical styles and traditions. The arrangements of standard fare such as Stille Nacht, Vom Himmel hoch and Veni, veni Emmanuel are fresh and vibrant. For once, one can agree with the publicity blurb: ‘The thoughtfully chosen repertoire and rich, authentic arrangements capture the spirit of Christmas in a truly unique and enchanting way.’

From German boys to English girls – specifically the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir of Cambridge and their inspirational social-media-savvy Director of Music Anna Lapwood (well over half a million followers on Instagram). Their EP-length programme of six numbers The Waiting Sky traces, according to Lapwood’s accompanying notes, the musical journey the choir has made in the past few years, ranging from Owain Park’s simple but beautiful Cradle Lullaby through to Kerensa Briggs’s seven-part Seek ye, first, the kingdom of God. Gramophone’s own James McCarthy’s Peaceful was the night provides an opportunity to delve into musical storytelling. The choir has a tradition where the last rehearsal of each term is spent composing a new piece as a group. Two of these are included and the second of them, the eponymous The Waiting Sky, which I thought particularly fine, was written over the course of two rehearsals last year. What a marvellous way to extend the Cambridge Christmas choral repertoire, taking the baton for so long held by David Willcocks and passed on to the great John Rutter – who, not incidentally, is this album’s producer and mixing engineer. This is a preponderance of items that feature robust major second, seventh and ninth intervals in the part-writing but the fervour with which the Pembroke girls sing for their charismatic conductor is always impressive.

By contrast, fourths and fifths dominate the arrangements on Welcome Yule – A Chorister’s Christmas, a hugely enjoyable and exuberant seasonal collection from the (boy and girl) Choristers and Schola of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, aided by eight professional lay vicars choral. John Gardner’s ever-popular Tomorrow shall be my dancing day leads off but with the unfamiliar accompaniment of percussion and piano duet (David Leigh and Tom Little). The duo also partners the sequence of seven carols that form Salvator mundi by William ‘Sir Christèmas’ Mathias. Tanya Houghton takes over accompanying duties for John Rutter’s sequence of eight carols he calls Dancing Day (the last of them using the same text as John Gardner’s work). Two organ solos follow by Mathias and Gerald Near (his brilliant Carillon on a Ukrainian Carol), rounded off by I saw three ships come sailing by in an uproarious arrangement by Stuart Nicholson, the choir’s director. The energy and commitment of the singers are infectious, though the somewhat distant microphone placement in the palpably empty venue keeps you at arm’s length.

If you want to hear a programme of traditional carols – you know, cathedral/church, organ, Carols for Choir (Green Book) – you are most likely to hear them in contemporary harmonisations if this year’s submissions are anything to go by. Take the beautifully recorded EP Winter Night from the UCI (University of California, Irvine) Chamber Singers. This choir of around 40 students, founded in 1965, is moulded each year into a superior vocal ensemble by their conductor, Irene Messoloras. Three of the five carols are Gabriel’s Message (Trad, arr Jim Clements), Wexford Carol (Trad, arr John Rutter) and The First Nowell (Trad, arr Ola Gjeilo). One has to salute the intonation and precision of this all-a cappella programme, and the three soloists who feature in these arrangements. Cecilia McDowall’s Now may we singen would be a test for any professional choir, let alone these students of maths, engineering and music. We toast the days by the Minnesotan composer Linda Kachelmeier was written in 2016 to be sung on New Year’s Eve. It has already found its way into the repertoire of many choirs.

For something completely different, let me give you A Concert Piano Christmas at Boston Symphony Hall. And in case you jump to the conclusion that it’s an easy-listening soft-centred box of chocolates, let me disabuse you. Lithuanian-born pianist Rasa Vitkauskaite has chosen 16 pieces of music associated with or about Christmas, beginning with three movements from The Nutcracker transcribed by Mikhail Pletnev. The album ends with two further movements – the Overture and Waltz of the Flowers (arr Karen Kornienko) – before the Schubert-Liszt Ave Maria. These, Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, Carol of the Bells, Santa Claus is comin’ to town and others are given the super-virtuoso treatment by five other resourceful arrangers. Think Earl Wild and his transcriptions of Gershwin and Rachmaninov songs. Think Bill Evans and other jazz luminaries. Remarkable high-wire acrobatics. And all while the talented Vitkauskaite maintains her role of principal pianist of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.

It’s a disc guaranteed to lift the spirits, something which, sadly, can’t be said of The Choir of St John’s College, Oxford, despite their album title. Anticipating the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth Poston’s Penguin Book of Carols (1965), News of Great Joy has 17 songs by the likes of Britten, Vaughan Williams, Warlock and Rutter, too many of which are similar in texture, character and tempo. Even The Sussex Carol is flat-footed, while the Holst setting of In the bleak mid-winter is unbearably sluggish. The well-drilled choir sing with commendable energy and commitment (excellent ensemble) but are recorded from far away at the back of the building; the organ, when it is used at all, is almost apologetic; while the solo violinist in David Bednall’s Ave Maria really should have gone for a second take.

Benjamin Appl’s The Christmas Album places him front and centre with the Regensburger Domspatzen choir, in which he sang as a boy. The first track, Adeste fideles sung in German and English, is disappointing. The excellent choir, singing the Willcocks final-verse descant, completely overwhelm Appl. He doesn’t do heroic (John McCormack in 1915 is the man for that), which you need for ‘Venite adoremus’. Appl’s is a pleasingly lyrical lieder baritone, which comes into its own much more effectively elsewhere. The album has a welcome mixture of orchestral and/or a cappella arrangements in an imaginative programme of 24 works by Mendelssohn, Chaminade (her charming Le Noël des oiseaux), Rutter, Reger, Bach, Gustav Nordqvist and others. There’s a very jolly song called Geh, Hansl, pack dein Binggerl zsamm (‘Go on Hansel, pack your bundle’) by someone called Hermann Delacher (1918-2004) accompanied on the ‘Styrian harmonica’ (aka button accordion) by the orchestra’s conductor Florian Helgath. It is, I confess, a little disconcerting to hear Humperdinck’s duet Evening Prayer sung by a child and a grown man. Appl’s mother, rather touchingly, accompanies her son on the guitar in the first verse of Stille Nacht.

Three purely instrumental Christmas albums feature contemporary tonal Christmas music. The first is the world-premiere recording of The Christmas Symphony by Robert Burns Arnot, who is also a medical correspondent, humanitarian aid worker and author. This is not a re-run of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols, Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s once popular Carol Symphony or Donald Fraser’s underrated Christmas Symphony, all works which use traditional carols. Arnot uses themes that sound like they might be traditional carols. Indeed Overture, the first of The Christmas Symphony’s six movements, begins unmistakably with The First Nowell before heading off in a different direction. Winter Variations, Romanze, Winter Storm, Prelude & Sonata and Finale follow in short order. The opening of his tone poem A Visit from St Nicholas echoes that of Overture, both depicting the arrival of ‘the much anticipated visitor’ (booklet). To be honest, the Symphony is more of a suite than a symphony and Arnot’s imaginative orchestration is a stronger card than his melodic invention, but it’s attractive, undemanding music, vividly recorded and played by the Vienna Synchron Orchestra (new to me too).

By contrast, John Rutter – Brass at Christmas is a disc brimful of earworms that you can’t get out of your head. In the past, no Christmas would be complete without David Willcocks, the Green Book and its successors. Today, no Christmas is complete without Rutter. Since the mid-’60s, when he was still a student, he has been turning out Christmas carols that now seem part of the fabric – Nativity Carol (1963) and Shepherds’ Pipe Carol (1965) are sung by choirs all over the world. These and 14 other Rutter Christmas songs have been arranged for brass band (Luc Vertommen responsible for the lion’s share). In three of them – O clap your hands, Nativity Carol and Te Deum – they are joined by the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus. If you want your spirits lifted this Christmas, look no further.

If any country is in need of the Christmas spirit, peace and goodwill it is Ukraine. The fact that Ukrainian Christmas has appeared at all is fairly miraculous, recorded as it was in November 2023 and January 2024 in the Liudkevych Hall, Lviv. The country has a long tradition of Christmas carols, whose melodies and meaning must resonate even more deeply these days as it contends with its Russian aggressors. The programme consists of 10 traditional Ukrainian carols, a more recent creation (On a sleigh God was born, 1988) and a longer (9'33") Fantasia from 2023 by the Ukrainian composer Bohdan Kryvopust, the man responsible for all the arrangements. The soloist on all tracks is the Ukrainian-born violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv, currently head of strings at the University of Connecticut. As the excellent booklet by Ukrainian-American musicologist Marika Kuzma has it: ‘No matter the gravity and suffering of the moment, Ukrainians look to the heavens and to their land for comfort, and at Christmastime they continue to wish a season of wonder and joy to “all people of good will”.’

Should most of the above repertoire be unfamiliar to the average music lover, Christmas at Ripon Cathedral wraps you up in a warm comfort blanket. Recorded by the pioneering Neil Collier on his Priory Records label, it captures the newly rejuvenated Ripon choir, transformed under its newish Director of Music, Ronny Krippner. He provides a wonderful arrangement of Silent Night, Michael Neaum one of Gaudete! and Tim Harper, Ripon’s Assistant Director of Music, a larky Holly and the Ivy. There are two organ solos to vary the menu, the first (Daquin’s Noël X) generously given to Ripon’s new Assistant Organist, Alastair Stone. The voices of the 66 boy and girl choristers send a tingle up the spine in their Willcocks descants, joyfully dominating the comparatively modest number of lower voices. The organ thunders in O come, all ye faithful. As I said at the beginning, the Anglican choral tradition is alive and well. To hear it in this setting is one of life’s great pleasures.