Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake [Johan Persson]

BEING civilised sorts of places, Hampstead and Highgate used to take pride in hosting serious music festivals on an almost conveyor-belt basis until money got scarce and the belt stopped. But still happily flourishing is Highgate International Chamber Music Festival, founded 12 years ago by a trio of local musicians who pulled in illustrious friends on the circuit to create the warm, inviting but immaculately delivered fixture at St Anne’s Church, N6, that runs again this year, Dec 2-8.

For data collectors, there are seven concerts, 40 works, and 24 performers – among them names like Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason, violinist Thomas Gould, oboist Nicholas Daniel, who read like a Wigmore Hall roster on a better-than-average week.

Slightly different this year is a focus on film music, with a screening of a 1920s silent movie, Sherlock Junior, to live music scored for piano quintet. But there are also straightforward concerts with core classical rep, culminating in a Dec 8 gala. See chambermusicfestival.co.uk

• December 1 is Advent Sunday, which means there’s likely to be a church not far from you with an Advent carol service: not to be confused with Christmas ones, though offering the most evocative choral repertoire of the church’s year. But December also opens the door to Christmas concerts, which start this week with a vengeance.

The City of London Choir get in smartly, Dec 4, at Cadogan Hall with a programme pointedly called First Nowell: cadoganhall.com. On Dec 5 John Rutter’s Christmas Celebration takes over the Albert Hall – twice, afternoon and evening – with the RPO, Bach Choir, and exuberant guests like tenor Nicky Spence: royalalberthall.com. Then come the advance-guard Messiahs – at St George’s Hanover Square, Dec 5 (London-handel-festival.com), and the Temple Church, also Dec 5, as part of the Temple’s broader Winter Festival (templemusic.org).

• But for a more adventurous take on Handel’s oratorio, you might investigate the “Queer Messiah” running Dec 6 at the Foundling Museum, Brunswick Square: site of the very institution that early performances of Messiah were intended to support. With the excuse that Handel constantly adapted his own score to changing circumstances, an outfit called Les Bougies Baroques have given themselves licence to create an LGBT+ version of the piece. Exactly what this means I can’t predict. But since there are plausible grounds to think that Handel was gay (he certainly never married, and was close to his manservant), his domestic arrangements may well factor into it. Potential fun, but maybe not for purists. foundlingmuseum.org.uk

• Also this week, ENO revives its knockabout Pirates of Penzance, Dec 2 -Feb 21, with G&S stalwarts like Richard Suart to keep the ship afloat: eno.org. And star pianist Stephen Hough has a solo recital at the Barbican, Dec 4: barbican.org.uk

• But extra-welcome news is that Matthew Bourne’s game-changing (and for the record, all-male) Swan Lake returns to Sadler’s Wells, Dec 3-Jan 26. It was 1995 when this now-legendary show first flew, ruffling feathers but turning heads as it effectively reinvented Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet. Now it’s back: the feathers brushed down but still capable of changing your assumptions about tutus. sadlerswells.com