John J. O'Connor reviewed the concert in a television column in The New York Times on 11 December 1991. He had mixed feelings about the producers' choice of music, some of which he thought hackneyed. "Am I the only person in New York", he asked, "who, after sitting through hundreds of ornate renditions, finds 'The 12 Days of Christmas' numbingly tedious?" He was more complimentary about the calypso-infused 'Mary's Little Boy Chile' and a sequence of traditional American Marian numbers, as well as rousing ensemble versions of 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' and 'Angels We Have Heard On High'. He conceded that Previn's conducting and the concert's specially commissioned arrangements made some old chestnuts sound new again. Battle, in puff-ball-sleeved scarlet, was "quite dazzling in her upper registers and gets there often enough to make sure no one forgets it". Von Stade, sheathed in glittering emerald, was more expressive in her hymns than in her spirituals. Wynton Marsalis punctuated proceedings with his trumpet's "soulful wailings". The standing ovation at the end of the concert was well earned.
