Over the past three weeks, there have been several performances of the so-called Christmas portion of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Messiah,” including one this past Sunday by the Masterworks Chorus of the Palm Beaches, which has mounted it annually for more than 30 years.

First performed in April 1742 for a hospital benefit in the Irish capital of Dublin, “Messiah” ― which is a celebration of Easter, not Christmas ― was an instant success for the popular German-born composer and has remained in the repertory ever since.

Tonight at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton, the Miami concert choir Seraphic Fire revives its own performance of the work after having shelved it for a year. The group found that its previous presentations at large venues such as Miami’s Arsht Center were not the right fit for the choir, said managing director Joey Quigley.

This year, the three performances of “Messiah” are returning to churches, which are generally more intimate, and where Seraphic Fire gives most of its concerts. “We thought we’d bring it back to our constituency. We think people will enjoy it much better,” Quigley said. He’s probably right: As of Tuesday, the group had sold almost 1,200 tickets for this weekend’s concerts.

The St. Gregory’s performance, which also features the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $65; visit seraphicfire.org or call 305-285-9060.

On record: Speaking of Seraphic Fire, the Grammy-nominated choir released another Christmas album, “Silent Night,” earlier this month, which reached No. 9 on the iTunes classical charts in its first days of release, just behind Yo-Yo Ma’s “Songs of Joy and Peace.”

The record’s 16 tracks, beautifully recorded at All Saints Episcopal Church in downtown Fort Lauderdale, include favorite carols such as the title song, “The First Nowell,” “Ding Dong Merrily on High” and “Carol of the Bells,” Renaissance works by Spain’s Tomas Luis de Victoria and England’s William Smith, and contemporary American pieces by Craig Hella Johnson, Steven Sametz and Stephen Paulus, plus the lovely “Little Child in a Manger,” by Canada’s Stephen Chatman.

Also this month, Delray String Quartet second violinist Tomas Cotik saw the release on Centaur Records of an all-Schubert disc with pianist Tao Lin, who teaches at Lynn University. Recorded last September at the University of Miami’s Gusman Hall, the recital contains three large works: the “Sonata in A” (D. 574), the “Rondo Brillant” (in B minor, D. 895), and the “Fantasy” (in C, D. 934).

Robert Haxham, writing in Fanfare magazine, gave this disc an “urgently recommended” rating, and praises Cotik and Lin’s “lofty musicianship” in a recording he calls “outstanding from the very beginning.”

Cotik and Lin also have recorded a disc of music by Astor Piazzolla that will be released this coming year.

At the symphony: Two local chamber orchestras started off their seasons this month with particular attention to small-scale symphonic works.

The Boca Raton Symphonia, in its concert Dec. 2, featured the young Chinese-born violinist Dan Zhu in a vigorous reading of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto that was technically impressive and that also had some individual touches that made it memorable. He is an excellent player, and I would welcome a return appearance.

At the Society of the Four Arts on Dec. 9, conductor Ramon Tebar led his restaffed Palm Beach Symphony in an exciting program that featured sinfoniettas by Piazzolla and Francis Poulenc, the “Classical Symphony” (No. 1 in D, Op. 25) of Prokofiev, and the five Dance Preludes of Witold Lutoslawski, with good solo work by clarinetist Paul Green.

The second half of the concert opened with the uproarious “Divertissement” of the French composer Jacques Ibert, which saw Tebar and the orchestra enjoying some onstage hijinks (a box of tissues for Tebar’s in-concert cool-down, and the conductor blowing a police whistle along with his percussionist) to go along with its impudent writing. The group played this smart, funny piece with real gusto and verve, and the smallish Four Arts audience loved it.

On Monday, the orchestra named Tebar, music director since 2010, its official artistic director, which gives the Spanish musician oversight of “all artistic decisions for the company,” according to a news release. In other business, orchestra officials announced this month that the soprano soloist for the orchestra’s Feb. 18 concert at Bethesda-by-the-Sea, featuring the Erwin Stein chamber reduction of Mahler’s “Fourth Symphony,” will be Nadine Sierra.

Sierra, a Broward County native, made a memorable Euridice in Gluck’s “Orfeo” for Palm Beach Opera two seasons ago, and followed that with a strong Gilda in Florida Grand Opera’s mounting of Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”