Britten Sinfonia and Mark Elder: L'enfance du Christ

Before attending Sir Mark Elder and the Britten Sinfonia’s performance of L’enfance du Christ, I could have claimed to be almost entirely ignorant of Berlioz’s music. The only exception – apart from an innocuous bucolic passage from Harold in Italy I ‘studied’ at A-level – was ‘The Shepherd’s Farewell’, which makes my Christmas chocolate box list annually.