Charles Dickens’s humanistic holiday ghost story A Christmas Carol has a tender touchstone in Tiny Tim. But Tim is no match for the metaphysical transport of Hans Christian Andersen’s “match girl.” A short story of hardly four pages long, The Little Match Girl tells of a child “bareheaded and barefoot,” out selling matches on a snowy New Year’s Eve, her feet “red and blue with cold.” No one is buying. To warm herself she lights the matches, one by one, each small flame bringing a vision of transcendence. David Lang’s choral work, based on Andersen and drawing formal inspiration from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2008. It is now considered a classic—one that haunts. Presented by Death of Classical, The Little Match Girl Passion is performed by the new music vocal group Ekmeles. —Laura Jacobs