A Very Merry Christmas to You

Here at Martin Christian Ministries, I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for visiting these pages.

My special gift to you for Christmas is one of my favorite selections from Handel's Messiah titled, "For Unto Us a Child Is Born."

This rendition is a real treat. The great maestro, Eugene Ormandy, who directed the famed Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly 50 years, teams up with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to present this masterpiece.

I wish I had a live video of the great "little maestro" as he was called, directing this piece. Ormandy was one of a kind, a brilliant musician and conductor, and  magnificently inspiring as he led the orchestra, drawing out from the musicians the very best that could be expected, leading the world to dub what he accomplished as "the Philadelphia sound."

That sound was Ormandy's belief that an orchestra should place the emphasis on the mellow woodwinds and violins, violas, and cellos, as opposed to what most orchestras were doing by emphasizing brass. Ormandy used brass, of course, but he believed that in a good orchestra, that shrill sound should be subservient to the more mellow tones produced by other instruments.

The result was a distinct style that placed the Philadelphia Orchestra in a category all its own.

I admit I loved Ormandy and the sound he got from the Philly Orchestra. In my mind, there was none better, and nothing today even comes close to approaching the near-perfection of that style and sound.

And of course, it gets no better than Handel's Messiah, and the Mormon Choir performs it admirably.

The message in this selection is what Christmas is all about. Enjoy. And God bless!

(Note: click on this YouTube link if you cannot view below).