Handel with gospel music, big band and Star Wars – but the original wins… plus the best of December’s classical concerts

Hallelujah! As dozens of Handel Messiahs pop up around the country for Christmas celebrations (ignoring, as we have always have, the fact that the oratorio was planned as a life of Christ for Easter rather than Christmas) there can have been few as life-affirming and yet as disorientating to some as this Gospel Messiah. The conductor Marin Alsop created this version three decades ago, and it finally reached England and an Albert Hall audience that initially seemed mightily puzzled.