'Tis the season

When Advent coincides with an election year, it’s hard not to categorize new Christmas albums as “front-runners,” “outsiders,” and “long shots,” if only to put one’s “smart money” (i.e., shopping dollars) behind the music most likely to “deliver.”

For those wanting something traditional and traditionally performed, the front-runner is the Dunedin Consort’s Bach: Magnificat & Christmas Cantata 63: Reconstruction of Bach’s First Christmas Vespers in Leipzig (Linn). Under the redoubtable direction of John Butt, the Consort strives to recreate—right down to the program’s running order—the musical experience at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church on Dec. 25, 1723, Bach’s first Christmas as St. Thomas’ musical director.

Nobody is around from 292 years ago to consult, so it’s impossible to know the extent to which Butt and the Consort have succeeded. But it’s doubtful that what was heard in Leipzig was any more precisely, reverently, or enthusiastically executed than what Butt and the Consort now make it possible to hear in one’s own living room. Consider them the Donald Trump of the traditionalist field.

There’s a tradition-lover’s Ben Carson too: Weihnachten/Christmas (Deutsche Grammophon) by the Viennese brass ensemble phil Blech Wien.

Three of the album’s 19 tracks are enhanced by the Polish operatic tenor Piotr Beczała, five by the Vienna Boys Choir and/or its alumni offshoot Chorus Viennensis, and one by both Beczała and the choirs. On the remaining 10, phil Blech Wien goes about matters more or less alone, blending the warmth of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble with the clean if rough-hewn lines of a Salvation Army band.

And the material, which imaginatively mixes compositions having clear Yuletide ties (“Gesu Bambino,” “Stille Nacht,” three selections from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker) with compositions more tangentially seasonal (“Abendsegen Und Traumpantomime” from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel), suits the instrumentation.

The Carly Fiorina of the 2015 tradition-friendly Christmas sweepstakes is Germany’s Helene Fischer. Possessing a soprano voice that combines the acrobatic qualities of Céline Dion with the charm of Petula Clark, Fischer devotes Disc One of her new two-disc collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, also titled Weihnachten (Polydor), to 18 mainly sacred classics sung in her native tongue and Disc Two to 16 mainly secular classics sung in English (plus “Feliz Navidad”). A better example of the “big tent” approach would be hard to find.

Admittedly, Fischer sometimes takes that approach too far. One example is her duet with the former Menudo heartthrob Ricky Martin, whose current status as a homosexual icon undercuts whatever credibility he might otherwise bring to his heterosexually romantic role in “Last Christmas.” The electronically created duets with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra feel like missteps too. Given Fischer’s ability to carry a song alone, the dubbed-in voices of long-dead singers come off as little more than gimmicky attempts to channel the ghosts of Christmases past. There’s also the question of why she thinks Leonard Cohen’s too-much-with-us “Hallelujah” belongs on a Christmas album at all.

For the most part, though, her selections make sense. And she sounds thrilled at the chance to sing the stocking stuffing out of them.

Notable among traditional 2015 Christmas albums deserving of at least Rubio-Cruz levels of support is Steven Curtis Chapman’s Christmas Hymns (Sparrow). Essentially pop in his instrumentation and often novel in his arrangements, Chapman nevertheless achieves a reverence entirely in keeping with his all-sacred program.

Curiously, given his reputation as a vocalist, the standout track is a rendition of “Carol of the Bells” on which he doesn’t sing at all.