Vaughan Williams’s Christmas Cantata Hodie (This Day) is a brilliant mosaic of musical styles set to poetry from the most diverse sources. Texts by Milton, Hardy, and George Herbert reflecting various Christmas experiences are bound together by a narration of the Gospel Nativity story sung in unison by a boys’ choir. With its gripping blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, Hodie flows with a vitality and inventiveness that belie a work written in Vaughan Williams’s old age. The Fantasia on Christmas Carols, which incorporates a number of traditional English carols, is notable for the obbligato cello part and for the varied treatment of the choir, which provide an atmospheric choral-orchestral texture.