Best candlelight Christmas concerts in London: strings, choirs and a free carol service

Christmas and candlelight go together like mince pies and an entirely unnecessary second mince pie. And candlelight pictures do a lot of the selling at Christmas. A dark church? Check. Rows of little flames? Check. Musicians in the glow? Check. It’s easy to book on the photo alone. Many of those photos come from one brand. If you’ve searched for candlelit concerts in London, you’ve almost certainly come across Candlelight, a concert series run by the ticketing company Fever in cities around the world. Every show follows the same blueprint: a string ensemble, an hour of familiar music and a stage full of candles. It’s a popular formula, and plenty of people love it. But the flames aren’t real (the candles are LED – much safer, of course, especially as there are so many of them), and O Holy Night on the programme means O Holy Night without a singer. Two of the six concerts below are Candlelight shows. The other four are something else. That matters, because a string quartet playing All…