Christmas with HIP Company. Photo © Partografia Photography and Film

HIP Company’s annual Christmas concert is always a source of delight and discovery. And so it proves here, with a program comprising (mostly) Baroque instrumental and vocal music from England, France, Germany, Italy and Mexico. It is especially notable for Krista Low’s treble viol making its HIP Company debut.

Apart from Low on bass and treble viols, the ensemble this time around also includes core member soprano Bonnie de la Hunty, Anna Maydwell playing a variety of recorders, Jane Cameron on violin and James Huntingford at the harpsichord.

The vocal items, accompanied by various combinations of instruments and exploring different elements of the Nativity story, are the most affecting – celebration and announcement with de la Hunty’s gorgeous arrangement of Noël Nouvelet and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Dal bel seno d’una stella; humility and divinity with Carissimi’s Salve puellule; sorrow and foreboding with another beautiful arrangement by de la Hunty, this time of the sombre Coventry Carol; Joyful praise with Monterverdi’s sonorous Laudate Dominum; and festive exuberance with a Mexican villancico, Convidando está la noche by Juan García de Zéspedes – the last...