It’s starting to turn into the season to be jolly (or whatever variant you can manage) with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra doing Messiah – a work which is more solemn and sublime than jolly but you can hardly complain when it is so resounding and grand. Then there’s the Brandenburg Orchestra with its Noël Noël Christmas show at Sydney’s Recital Hall from 9 to 14 December which includes Tommie Andersson’s arrangement of Silent Night (originally Gruber’s Stille Nacht) together with The Little Drummer Boy and – surprise, surprise – the Hallelujah from Handel’s Messiah.