Dame Sarah Connolly is at Temple Church

YOU’LL have noticed that it’s Christmas, more or less – and so have London’s music venues, which are now in furious, full-on seasonality with St John’s Smith Square upfront as it rolls out its 37th annual Christmas Festival. Night after night for two weeks, Smith Square lays on a conveyor belt of choirs from across the performing spectrum, most of them star quality, and amounting to a state-of-the-nation survey of how things are on the choral circuit – as well as a near-comprehensive package of Christmas repertoire old and new.

It kicks off Dec 9 with the Belgian ensemble Vox Luminis who specialise in renaissance and baroque music, picking up Gramophone awards in the process. Next night, Dec 10, the very different London Concert Choir sing Vaughan Williams’s deathless Fantasia on Christmas Carols alongside the less familiar but just as magical Christmas cantata In terra pax by Gerald Finzi. And other highlights include Christ Church Oxford, Dec 13, and the always innovative Ex Cathedra, down from Birmingham on Dec 15. Look out for the Cambridge choirs of Clare and Trinity colleges, Westminster Abbey, the Gesualdo Six, and Polyphony in the days that follow. sjss.org.uk

• Elsewhere, the suddenly ubiquitous Anna Lapwood leads her Pembroke College Choir in Britten’s Ceremony of Carols at Kings Place, Dec 9 (kingsplace.co.uk). The magnificent Tenebrae bring high-level seasonality to Wigmore Hall on Dec 11 (wigmore-hall.org.uk). And there’s a Messiah worth taking note of at the Temple Church on Dec 12. But also at the Temple, in its spectacular Tudor Hall on Dec 14, you can hear that doyenne of English mezzos Dame Sarah Connolly with pianist Julius Drake, performing seasonal songs by Schubert, Wolf and others. Seriously classy, not to mention atmospheric. templemusic.org

• Comparably high up in the song-recital pecking order is the Royal Festival Hall appearance of baritone Matthias Goerne with pianist Vikingur Olafsson for a Dec 9 programme of Schubert and Brahms. One of the world’s most charismatic voices, Goerne used to be a regular visitor to the UK but doesn’t turn up so often these days. And his partnership with the equally charismatic Olafsson can only be special – which is no doubt why it justifies the RFH: a big space for a song recital. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Two other star pianists playing London this week are the dazzling Yuja Wang, who you can guarantee to be in extrovert form for the Rachmaninov concerto she plays with the Philharmonia at the Festival Hall on Dec 11, and the no less dazzling but introverted Yevgeny Kissin playing Mozart with the LSO at the Barbican on Dec 14 & 15 (barbican.org.uk). Compare and contrast.

• Two-hundred years ago, on Dec 10, 1822, the Belgian/French composer Cesar Franck was born. And though the anniversary isn’t getting too much attention in post-Brexit Britain, the Royal College of Music hasn’t forgotten him, and is running two days of commemorative events over Dec 9-10. Tickets are selling fast, so you might end up on a waiting list – but don’t be put off. Franck is fascinating, a giant of French Romanticism, and worth queuing for. rcm.ac.uk