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Bach: Christmas Oratorio (CD Review - The Mail on Sunday, 2013)
Disc of the Week ***** For me nothing is more majestic, or better conveys the sheer joy of Christmas, than the opening chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. And it sounds especially well on a new Hyperion offering conducted by the hugely talented Stephen Layton, with the drums and brass of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment hammering out one of Bach’s greatest celebratory melodies. And then
Bach: Christmas Oratorio (CD Review - The Arts Desk, 2013)
A flurry of timpani and a pair of trilling flutes kick things off nicely. The OAE's oboes and trumpets are also in fine form, but what really makes this Bach recording a joy is the weight and richness of the choral sound. So many period performances have just one or two voices per part, so hearing close to 40 singers chirping away is an unexpected treat. Choruses and chorales alike proceed with pl
Bach: Christmas Oratorio (CD Review - Sinfini Music, 2013)
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio started life as a set of related cantatas, conceived for performance on the six church feasts between Christmas Day and Epiphany. The composer recycled several earlier works - secular pieces for the Elector of Saxony and his family among them - to create a compelling mix of choral numbers, recitatives and arias which collectively tell the Nativity story and meditate on it
Bach: Christmas Oratorio (CD Review - Hi-Fi Critic, 2013)
Brazen and celebratory, the opening of J S Bach’s Christmas Oratorio blazes into life in a Cambridge chapel setting, the acoustic spacious, the choristers and players filling it with joy. There is much here that is deeply effecting as well as exhilarating (trumpets to the fore) and with some fine solo singing (including from Iestyn Davies and James Gilchrist) there is much to wonder at. With a fin
Bach: Christmas Oratorio (CD Review - BBC Music Magazine, 2013)
The superb quartet of soloists yields not a demisemiquaver to the competition. In a work incontestably smitten with the alto voice, Iestyn Davies triumphs, dependably warm and expressively supple. Matthew Brook's resplendent all-guns-blazing 'Grosser Herr' is gilded by David Blackadder's nimble trumpet and, throughout, James Gilchrist's relaxed and lyrical Evangelist maintains the narrative flow …
