Holiday Music in Portugal
In Portugal holiday music is not necessarily linked to the English-German-US canon of Messiah and caroling. Most professional performing organizations do a big concert, but the pieces performed are usually not from a uniform playbook related to Christmas. Of course, local community choirs are heard around town performing Portuguese (and other) Christmas songs, and caroling occurs, if not as much as in the US and UK. Over the recent holiday period I heard two choral and one orchestral concert around Lisbon. The best of these was the New Year's Eve concert of the Gulbenkian Choir, founded in 1964 and usually considered the best professional chorus in the area. This year's concert was entertaining and well performed, and was held in the wonderfully ornate Church of São Roque, the earliest extant Jesuit church in Portugal (late 17th century). This is one of the few churches to survive the massive 1755 earthquake and pairs a gaudy Baroque interior with a plain rectangular archite...