Deutsche Grammophon has announced plans for December and Christmas performances on its online platform DG Stage – The Classical Concert Hall.

Launched five months ago, DG Stage has already hosted many of the yellow label’s leading artists. First up this month, tomorrow (December 4), is a performance of the Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score to Chernobyl. Then on December 12, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, winner of this year’s Gramophone Recording of the Year for DG album pairing Weinberg’s symphonies Nos 2 and 21, conducts the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in a programme including Schumann’s Piano Concerto (with Kirill Gerstein) and more Weinberg, this time his Symphony No 7. This performance comes from the Konzerthaus Dortmund. Then, from London’s LSO St Luke’s, comes Krystian Zimerman in Beethoven’s five piano concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle – broadcasts are on December 17, 19 and 21.

Seasonal repertoire will be offered on December 23 by the Sistine Chapel Choir, recorded appropriately enough in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, and joined by Cecilia Bartoli – the first woman ever to record with the Choir. The following day, Christmas Eve, sees a 1999 recording of soprano Barbara Bonney and baritone Matthias Goerne with the Freiburg Barockorchester in a programme of Baroque Christmas music, including highlights from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Handel’s Messiah, recorded at Freiburg Cathedral.

Christmas Day marks a Wagner anniversary with a work shown free to all viewers of DG Stage: exactly 150 years ago after the composer dedicated his ‘Siegfried Idyll’ to his wife Cosima on her birthday and arranged for it to be performed by a chamber ensemble in their Swiss home on Christmas. With that piece, the Bayreuth Festival 2020 marked what would have been its opening day at Haus Wahnfried – Wagner’s home and now a museum – performed by Festival Music Director Christian Thielemann and members of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.

Another 1999 concert is then broadcast over two days, on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, the performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio which had prefaced Sir John Eliot Gardiner's year-long Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. December 27 sees a broadcast of the Nutcracker, conducted by Valery Gergiev, recorded at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, then on December 30 Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain complete their DG Stage Beethoven symphony cycle with the Ninth. Finally, on New Year’s Eve, Andris Nelsons conducts the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester in Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 2 (with Evgeny Kissin).

For full details, and ticket prices, see DG Stage.