Recorded live at its UK premiere in London’s Royal Festival Hall in late 2021, James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio proves to be both a puissant declaration of personal faith and a persuasive contemporary addition to a long and hallowed musical tradition.

Setting texts from scripture, the liturgy and a trio of devoutly religious English poets – John Donne, Robert Southwell (hanged and later canonised for his clandestine Catholic activities in Protestant England), and John Milton – MacMillan unabashedly asserts his fervent conviction in the relevance and immediacy of the Nativity story. As such, it’s both a declaration of faith and a bracing invitation to believe in its sacred message.

The work is in 14 scenes, arranged palindromically in two parts, each bookended by orchestral sinfonias. If Bach is the obvious influence here, echoes of plainchant, Beethoven, Bruckner, Holst, Messiaen and Britten are also to be heard in a work that blends profundity, poetry and passionate drama with a cinematic flair that seems tailor-made for the sensibilities of a modern audience.

MacMillan glosses the familiar tale of Christ’s birth with...