Gifts of Yuletide

There may come a time during which Christmas music fails to unite its hearers. Thankfully, that time has not yet come. Doubters need only play selections from the cream of this year’s Christmas-music crop in mixed political company and marvel as opponents stop arguing long enough to hum and maybe to sing along.

They might even dance, especially if the selections to which they’re subjected include Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra’s new recording of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker.

Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Symphony No. 4 (Mariinsky) marks the second time that Gergiev has put the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) Orchestra through Tchaikovsky’s paces. That the Russian conductor has this time adopted a slightly slower pace, extending his previous running time by approximately two minutes, does not shortchange the briskness of the music’s many lively passages or the ability of the Mariinsky Orchestra to honor the work’s wide dynamic range. The palpably balletlike Symphony No. 4 makes a fitting encore.

Neil Diamond’s Acoustic Christmas (Deluxe Edition) (Capitol), as its title suggests, has everything to do with Christmas. And, unlike his previous Yuletide collections, it avoids overproduction in favor of a quiet simplicity that allows Diamond to sing with gentle sincerity. He sounds as fully and as intimately invested in “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” (with masculine pronouns intact), “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night,” “Mary’s Boy Child,” and “We Three Kings” as he does on the charming new originals “#1 Record for Christmas” (an “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” for grown-up singer-songwriters) and “Christmas Prayers.”

Following a similarly folksy path are Duane Allen, Joe Bonsall, William Lee Golden, and Richard Sterban, aka The Oak Ridge Boys. On Celebrate Christmas (Gaither Music Group) they mix the sacred, the sentimental, and the playful with the effortlessness that one would expect from one of America’s most successful and longest-running vocal quartets. What one won’t expect: a “Hallelujah Chorus” that rivals The Roches’.

The year’s most ethereal Christmas offering comes courtesy of the composer-musician David Arkenstone and the singer Charlee Brooks. Titled Winter Fantasy (Green Hill), it finds Arkenstone showcasing Brooks’ gossamer soprano on the majority of its 13 tracks with imaginative, swirling arrangements and a lush modernization of Celtic instrumentation. The duo’s rendition of the medieval carol “Gaudete” captures the project’s heart, but even the instrumentals and the nonsacred pieces (“New Snow,” “A Wassail, A Wassail Throughout This Town,” the title cut) complement rather than contradict the predominantly sacred whole.

This overview began with praise for a new recording of Tchaikovsky’s music. It will end with qualified praise for a new collection of recordings of music by or associated with Mozart.

Mozart: The Christmas Album (Deutsche Grammophon) brings together 14 selections recorded by almost as many ensembles and/or soloists (vocal and instrumental) between 1964 and 1994. Conceptually, it risks derision. None of the compositions have anything directly to do with Christ’s birth, and only two of them—“Die Schlittenfahrt” (“The Sleigh Ride”) from the Three German Dances and “Schlittenfahrt” by Mozart’s father Leopold—have anything to do with winter.

The concept gets stretched even thinner. The pianist Christoph Eschenbach’s performance of “12 Variations in C Major on ‘Ah, vous dirai-je Maman,’” for instance, seems to have been included simply because many know its melody as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and, well, the Magi followed a star.

Nevertheless, the compilers have scattered a handful of sacred selections throughout. And if only for that reason, a kind of Christmas spirit emerges.