The Kolkata Classics Club did the city a favour by presenting Yuletide Classics at the St Paul's Cathedral on the bitingly cold night of December 17 last year. Listening to reputed musicians celebrate Christmas is a wonderful way to spend the time leading up to December 25. The programme featured the pianist, Jennifer Heemstra, and the soprano, Susan Williams. Heemstra holds several degrees in music, and has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, theatrical accompanist and coach throughout Europe and the United States of America. Williams has performed worldwide in leading opera roles as a soloist; in Austria, she sang the soprano solos in Mozart's Coronation Mass. She is assistant professor of voice at the University of Alabama. These are just a few of the women's stupendous musical achievements; listing them all would leave little space for a review.

I felt a frisson of excitement, bordering on nostalgia, while walking into the grand cathedral. I spent 16 years studying in a convent institution, and recognized many of the items on the programme brochure as songs my classmates and I grew up listening to and singing (with, I daresay, enough girlish enthusiasm to make up for the collective lack of skill). Williams began her performance with ' Jesu, Thou Art Watching Ever' by G.F. Handel. It took her one song to find her feet and adjust to the acoustics of the vast cathedral. Her rendition of ' Pie Jesu' (from Gabriel Fauré's Requiem) was infinitely better. The nature of the melody was well-suited to Williams's emotion-laden voice, and some of the performances that followed - Felix Mendelssohn's ' I Will Sing of Thy Great Mercies', Franz Schubert's ' Ave Maria', and Fauré's ' Adieu' and ' Notre amour' - were pitch-perfect.

It was with the carol, ' What Child Is This?' - arranged by Patrick M. Liebergen, this tune evolved from a traditional English folk song called ' Greensleeves' - that Heemstra and Williams really came together as musicians. Heemstra's skill with the piano is effortless; other reviewers have claimed that her 'finely calibrated piano accompaniment proves you don't need an orchestra to showcase lovely music'. I found this description of her abilities quite fitting as I listened to her play. She had magic at her fingertips. The rich timbre of Williams's voice notwithstanding, it was Heemstra who kept the audience enraptured through most of the evening's performances. Some of these, such as ' Gesu Bambino' (Pietro A. Yon), ' O Holy Night' (Adolphe Adam), and the traditional hymns, ' The First Noel' and ' Angels We Have Heard on High', brought back a flood of memories.

But the pièce de résistance was the duo's encore. Sprung as a pleasant surprise on the audience, Williams and Heemstra decided to perform an aria from Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus. Williams came to life as Adele, the young chambermaid at the heart of the operetta, who boldly claims that she can play any part to perfection, from country girl to queen. Williams's voiced soared and dipped; she moved seamlessly between Adele's different roles. It was evident that a spirited performance of this sort was her forte. She was a pleasure to behold and to listen to, and was complemented magnificently by Heemstra.