The holiday season usually brings an expected harvest of albums. But, every once in a while, a seasonal release seeks to surprise, delight and refresh our love for the music of snow and celebration in a new way. Grammy Award winning multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and composer Ted Nash and singular singer/songwriter Kristen Lee Sergeant have brought something of this high caliber to the party in Holidays: a markedly distinctive record for the season. Ted Nash is well known as a bandleader and as a member and arranger for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He is paired with Kristen Lee Sergeant, a vocalist and songwriter who has been singled out for her intelligent lyrics and dramatic styling of song. Nash and Sergeant aren't just occasional partners on the bandstand (Nash has appeared in several of Sergeant's releases), they are partners in life with all that entails, including a collaboration in wine called Two Notes, now in it's fourth vintage.

These five works, from three different stages of Hans Gál's long life (1890-1987), all show his consummate craftsmanship but are otherwise quite different in character. The passionate Piano Quartet (1914), downstream from Brahms and Dvorák, brings the grand gestures of Romanticism into the early twentieth century. The 1935 Sonatina in F major for violin and piano, recently rediscovered, and the three Sonatinas from 1956 put a premium on textural clarity and lyrical approachability; here the contrapuntal ingenuity, ceaseless thematic development, harmonic freedom and rhythmic unpredictability of Gál's language animate the music from within. Newcastle-born pianist Sarah Beth Briggs was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition at the age of eleven and studied with Denis Matthews and Edith Fischer. Katalin Kertesz is the leader of the Kertesz Quartet, with which she recently recorded the four string quartets by the nineteenth century Czech composer heinrich Wenzel Veit. Nichola Blakey, viola, enjoys a busy freelance career, giving performances across the UK. Cressida Nash, cello, is a founding member of Musicians South West.

STRAVINSKY, I.: Soldier's Tale Suite / Octet / Les Noces (Tianwa Yang, Virginia Symphony Chorus, Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players, Falletta) The three works on this recording were composed at a crucial juncture in Stravinsky's musical life. The Soldier's Tale, a small-scale theatrical work for instrumental septet, narrator and two speakers completed in 1918 [Naxos 8.573537]. It is performed here in the suite premièred in 1920. The Octet marked a new element in Stravinsky's writing, inaugurating a turn to neo-classicism, whilst Les noces (The Wedding) is a ballet cantata impelled by dramatic motor rhythms, and once again saturated in his Russian background. Scored for pitched and unpitched percussion, vocal soloists, and mixed chorus, it is a pivotal work in Stravinsky's development.