The music we need right now: James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio reviewed

The two most depressing words in contemporary classical music? That’s easy: holy minimalism. I know, I know. Lots of people love the stuff, and I wish them joy. But the notion that one simply jettisons the whole western tradition of struggle, of purpose, of wholehearted emotional argument — and that the greatest and most crucial of human questions can be answered by a mush of soothing stylistic mannerisms — well, I’ve tried and so far I just can’t do it. I can’t simply tune in and drop out amid a haze of Yankee Candle harmonies. I hear those static choral clusters and watery melismas, and it feels like being suffocated in velvet. Silently, the spirit begins to scream.

Sir James MacMillan’s huge new Christmas Oratorio is pretty much the exact opposite of all that. It’s vigorous, unsentimental and completely unapologetic — a royal feast for a celebration on a cosmic scale. And how! The table overflows, with MacMillan’s teeming influences functioning not as sonic fancy dress but as guests at the banquet, very much alive and doing what they’ve always done, with renewed power. Bach is the most obvious presence: the Oratorio’s evening-long span harks back to Johann Sebastian’s own gloriously over-filled Christmas Oratorio. But you’ll also bump into Holst, Britten, Haydn and Beethoven, all glass in hand and delighted to see you. There are raucous shouts from Janacek and sudden, blinding glimpses of Olivier Messiaen. It goes further: when MacMillan alludes to plainchant, it’s never in inverted commas. It’s urgent and unselfconscious. He means it, and you can tell.

Holy maximalism, then? I wouldn’t want to give the impression that the Christmas Oratorio is some sort of blow-out. It’s generous — sometimes overwhelmingly so — but never profligate.