The Choir of Clare College Cambridge – Smith Square on December 16 [clarecollegechoir.com]

THINGS that have been around for a long while become so much a part of life that they get taken for granted; and that’s a risk with the venerable Nash Ensemble which has functioned at the heart of Britain’s concert life for 60 years. For most of us, a lifetime.

So it’s good that Wigmore Hall, where the Ensemble is in near-perpetual residence, if waving flags for the 60th anniversary. And there’s an intensive weekend of classic Nash activities over Dec 14-16, with programmes of core repertory nudging world premieres from Mark Anthony Turnage and Kurt Schwertsik.

The thing about the Nash – founded in 1964 by two students at the Royal Academy of Music and named after its adjoining Nash terraces – is that it’s a flexible group of players who turn up as required. And that they’re all solo-status means they can tackle the most sophisticated established works alongside the trickiest new commissions, of which there have been plenty over the decades.

This special anniversary season runs on into the spring, worth checking out: wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Another long-established organisation that knows about commissioning is London Youth Opera, which encourages composers to write stageworks for children. Its latest venture, at the Shaw Theatre, St Pancras, Dec 14-15, is The Quest: a fable about young scientists tackling corrupt politicians in times of environmental crisis. Composed by Nathan Williamson to a libretto by Megg Nicoll, it sounds worthy but promises to be fun. shaw-theatre.com

• For more seasonal music-theatre, Will Todd’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol for singers and instruments plays Dec 17-18 at Smith Square: sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk

On a larger scale, the Royal Opera digs out its rather austere Richard Jones production of La Boheme, Dec 16-Jan 17: rbo.org.uk

And though it’s a choral cantata rather than a stagework, there’s usually some element of theatre in Britten’s St Nicolas, which gets done at the Union Chapel, Islington, Dec 15, by Eclectic Voices. Based on the life of the 3rd-century Turkish bishop whose name got morphed into Santa Claus, somehow acquiring red clothes and reindeer in the process, its great moment is the miracle where Nicolas restores to life three boys who have been chopped up and pickled: a feat that Britten turns into music of heart-stirring beauty as the boys process in singing Alleluias and the audience reach for handkerchiefs. Unmissable. eclecticvoices.co.uk

• Otherwise, it’s Christmas concerts everywhere, including Linden Baroque and the promisingly named Gluhwein Singers with a Baroque Christmas at St Stephen’s, Rosslyn Hill NW3, Dec 15 (lindenbaroque.org) The Temple Church, off the Strand, has Christmas music from Latin America done by the Idrisi Ensemble, Dec 13: templemusic.org

•  And there are the inevitable Messiahs: at St Marylebone Parish Church, Dec 14 (stmarylebone.org), at Hampstead Parish Church, Dec 15 (hampsteadparishchurch.org.uk), and more grandly, the Barbican, Dec 16, done by the Academy of Ancient Music (barbican.org.uk)

• But I specially commend the Choir of Clare College Cambridge who make their annual festive appearance Dec 16 at Smith Square under director Graham Ross, with music by Howells, Dove and their former director John Rutter – as critical to Christmas these days as Charles Dickens and the Waitrose ad. Dripping with seasonality. sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk