St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, will host one of the region’s finest renditions of the traditional “Lessons and Carols” ceremony Sunday, Dec. 21, at 5 p.m. The parish’s music director, Andrew Kotylo, will lead a combined chorus of the parish’s adult choir and children’s choir in performances of music associated with the Advent season of preparation for Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, the long-awaited Messiah.

The liturgy consists of readings from the prophecies regarding the Messiah scattered throughout the books of the Old Testament and passages in the Gospel of St. Luke in the Bible’s New Testament recalling the birth of Jesus in the small town of Bethlehem. The readings will be enhanced by anthems sung by the Choir and carols sung by the congregation.

For more information visit www.stpaulschestnuthill.org.

Chestnut Hill conductor

Chestnut Hill’s Donald Meineke, music director of Choral Arts Philadelphia and music director and organist of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia, will conduct “One Faith – Many Voices: Christmas in Ukraine” Friday, Dec. 19, at 6:30 p.m. in St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, 24th and Poplar Streets, Philadelphia. The concert’s program will feature both new and traditional music of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Meineke will lead a vocal quartet in music sung in Ukrainian Catholic churches throughout the nation and in the diaspora here in this country.

Holiday concerts

The first weekend of December provided me with several opportunities to hear local ensembles celebrate the Christmas season through music. I attended Choral Arts Philadelphia’s “Carols by Candelight” Saturday afternoon and then Piffaro’s “Ein Kind Geborn” in the evening. Sunday afternoon found me in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Locust Street, for the parish’s “Procession of Advent Lessons and Carols.” Two of the three performances were led by Chestnut Hill’s Donald Meineke and one featured organist Andrew Kotylo of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

The program chosen by Meineke for Choral Arts’ “Carols by Candelight,” heard by hundreds of music-lovers in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, did not follow the normal pattern of “happy-happy” celebration. Rather, the texts of many of the works held up in dark comparison the promise of the Christ Child against the character of the world He came to save. The overall mood was more somber than festive, the colors more subdued than audacious, the tone more saddened than giddy.

Thank goodness for Saturday afternoon’s audience – a second performance was scheduled for the early evening to accommodate the large number of music-lovers hoping to hear it – that Meineke and Choral Arts, with Kotylo at the Church’s magnificent antiphonal pipe organ, proffered some of the finest choral singing I’ve had the pleasure of hearing in at least a decade. The blend, purity of pitch, fullness of tone, lilt of phrasing and broad strokes of dynamics was mightily impressive coming from all sections of the chorus, but especially from the sopranos. Meineke wisely made no attempt to elicit from adult female singers the unique, hooty timber of a choir of boy trebles. Rather, he asked for and received such clarity and security as befitted a program of music by a plethora of composers and arrangers. Much of the repertoire was modern – and beautiful – and beautifully sung.

Twenty-four hours later, Meineke led the Choir and Choristers of St. Mark’s Church in the traditional Anglican liturgy of a “Procession of Advent Lessons and Carols.” This time around, his sonic model was, indeed, the traditional and unique color of the choirs of men and boys heard in the cathedrals and chapels of the Church of England. The tone was highly focused and nigh on pure, the emotions projected more spiritual than sensual, and the mood not so much festive and reverential.

Once again, Meineke led his singers in interpretations that were spot-on delineations of both the immediate and substantive meanings of the texts of the music, once again more often modern than not.

For one of the few times in recent memory, I found Piffaro’s “Ein Kind Geborn” (A Little Child Is Born) a little too long. Even with the expert help of the Tenet Vocal Artists, I thought the second half, following an intermission of at least 20 minutes, to have been superfluous. A straight-shot 75 minutes would have served the Christmas music of the Renaissance in Germany far better than a program spaced out over two hours, even though all the performances were excellent.

While it was nice hearing Piffaro and Tenet “up close and personal,” as we did in the smaller confines of the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields – their usual home of Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church was unavailable – it became by the end of the program a tad too confining for my tastes.

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