Both The Philadelphia Orchestra and Philadelphia Ballet are set to celebrate the Christmas season with well-loved performances and productions of holiday favorites. The Orchestra is offering a mix of five programs in Marian Anderson Hall between Dec. 12 and Jan. 10 with themes that enhance the “season to be jolly,” while the Ballet will dance its heart and imagination out at the Academy of Music with George Balanchine’s acclaimed choreography to Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s immortal “The Nutcracker.”

 Those “Fabulous Philadelphians” and their music director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, will get their ball rolling with “Yannick’s Holiday Mixtape in Concert” Thursday, Dec. 12, and Friday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. This is a new entry from the Orchestra and will feature a cornucopia of popular holiday favorites. The traditional “The Glorious Sounds of Christmas” returns Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. with William Eddins on the podium. The concert’s title comes from the iconic 1962 recording on Columbia Masterworks featuring the Orchestra and its legendary maestro, the late Eugene Ormandy.  The LP album sold more than 100,000 copies and earned Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra a “Gold Record” in recognition of that stellar feat. 

 George Frideric Handel’s monumental oratorio, “Messiah,” will be performed, with the help of the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m. in Anderson Hall. Nezet-Seguin will conduct.

 Marin Alsop will join the Orchestra to welcome the New Year with a concert Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 7 p.m., and the “Lunar New Year of the Snake” will be celebrated with music Friday, Dec. 10, at 8 p.m.  For more information visit philorch.org.

 Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” had already become a holiday favorite throughout the world when George Balanchine choreographed his own version in 1954 for his New York City Ballet. One of Balanchine’s most trusted students was Barbara Weisberger, who later went on to found the Pennsylvania (now Philadelphia) Ballet. His most treasured gift of “good luck” to her was the rare right to dance his “Nutcracker.” It will be danced Dec. 6-29 in the Academy of Music. For more information visit philadelphiaballet.org.

 Lyric Fest Sings

 The women of Lyric Fest – Chestnut Hill pianist Laura Ward and Flourtown mezzo-soprano Suzanne DuPlantis – presented a recital entitled “Nevertheless, She Sang” Saturday, Nov. 16, and Sunday, Nov. 17. The first was given in Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church; the second was performed in the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Along with Ward at the piano, the singers were Christine Lyons, Caroline Olson and Laura Strickling.

 The program’s moniker refers to the difficulty women composers and poets have traditionally had getting their works published. It’s been said that “Anonymous” has almost exclusively been a woman because very few men were unable to publish either music or poetry under their own name unless they chose to use a pseudonym. 

 Stretching back to the Middle Ages and then vaulting forward into the 21st century, “Nevertheless, She Sang” not so much surveyed a multitude of incredibly noteworthy songs set to incredibly noteworthy poetry, it established a sense that women composers and poets are not just the equal of their male counterparts but that they have traditionally offered a bevy of insights into the human condition often overlooked or underexpressed by their male colleagues.

 Several of the composers are either already familiar to us or have become so in recent years: Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Florence Price, Cecile Chaminade, Andrea Clearfield, Jennifer Higdon and folk-songstress Joni Mitchell. Some of those whose music was sung are almost completely unknown to modern audiences, even though they shouldn’t be based on their talent and the beauty of their music.

 Perhaps the most stunning and telling of those sadly forgotten composers, who just so happened to be women, is Carrie Jacobs-Bond, whose “A Perfect Day” brought the program to a close. Composed in 1909 and published by her own publishing company because no one else would do it, the song eventually sold 25 million copies of its sheet music. Jacobs-Bond wrote the lyrics as well as the music, and the song in its entirety captures the optimistic spirit of the nation in that first decade of the 20th century as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of an individual person committed to the finest ideals of humanity.

 Hearing it sung beautifully and intimately by Caroline Olsen, sitting in a pew late Saturday afternoon in Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church (perhaps the region’s most flawless example of Neo-Gothic architecture), made me ask myself: “What’s gone awry with our society that songs like this are no longer written and composed, by either women or men?”

 On a brighter note, Ward – seated at a warmly resonant Baldwin concert grand piano – accompanied her singers with technical proficiency and interpretive sensitivity.

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