‘No-one, but no-one performs Messiah better every year than the choir Polyphony under the conductor Stephen Layton’ (Evening Standard)

Polyphony and Stephen Layton’s live Messiah at St John’s Smith Square has become one of the highlights of the musical season. The joyful sincerity and urgent brilliance of the performers has brought the familiar story to life again and again. Now this wonderful experience is available on disc, recorded in 2008 for a new release that will surely prove a strong competitor in a necessarily crowded market. Polyphony is joined by the Britten Sinfonia and a quartet of magnificent young soloists – all variously acclaimed as the premier Handel singers of the new generation.

There's no doubt that it's a favourite, perhaps the best-loved oratorio ever written, but should Handel's 'Messiah' be considered a Christmas favourite? Unlike Bach's 'Christmas Oratorio' (written just seven years previously), the origins of 'Messiah' aren't especially seasonal: Handel famously composed it in just three weeks, during August and September 1741, for a benefit performance in Dublin where it was first performed—to an ecstatic reception—on 13th April 1742, in support of local charities. The first English performance—where it was less favourably received—took place the following year, on 23 March 1743, in London's Covent Garden Theatre. From 1750, annual benefit performances in aid of London's Foundling Hospital, a tradition which continued after Handel's death, undoubtedly helped establish it as a pillar of the repertoire. But still, there's nothing Christmassy about its early performance history.

So is it a retelling of the Christmas story? Well, yes and no. In 'Handel’s Messiah: A Celebration', the scholar and historian Richard Luckett described the work as providing a commentary on Christ's Nativity, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. Certainly, most of the texts chosen by Charles Jennens, Handel's librettist, are taken from the Old Testament—spot the extract from St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians which Brahms was to set 120+ years later in his 'German Requiem': 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'—though the scene from St Luke's gospel (setting the only text from the New Testament) provides a glorious and appropriately festive climax to Part 1, with the angelic host appearing to the shepherds.

Most recordings of 'Messiah' choose something other than a representation of the Nativity as their cover art, and mention should be made here of the late Laila Shawa's extraordinary depiction of the Crucifixion which graces the cover of the Hyperion recording by Stephen Layton and Polyphony. This performance was recorded live in December 2008 in St John's, Smith Square in London, something of an annual tradition in itself. But why restrict 'Messiah' to any particular time of the year? A performance as good as this—a strong competitor even in an overcrowded field—positively demands to be heard whatever the season.