Reviews
Review Search
The choral director Stephen Layton's Good Friday performances with his chamber choir Polyphony, of Bach's St John Passion at St John's Smith Square, have become quite a fixture in recent years, to judge by the lengthy last-minute box office queue hoping for return tickets this time round.
And it's no surprise, either, for not only had he the support of the period players of The Academy of Ancient...
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio begins and ends in a great shout of joy, with ringing D major trumpets and a great clatter of kettledrums. In between comes an immense variety of moods, some of which you’d expect, such as the intimate gentleness of the nativity scene, some of which are surprising. Just as in the Passions, Bach suddenly stands back from the familiar story and points out its eternal...
It is a very special experience to hear Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in St John’s, Smith Square, since Bach’s work was first performed in the Christmas season of 1734/5, and Thomas Archer’s church had been completed just six years previously. This oratorio is now as firmly established in musical London’s Christmas celebrations as Polyphony’s Messiah (on Monday night, same place, same soloists and...
Not every Yuletide fixture need be commercial and routine. Certainly St John’s annual Christmas Festival packs them in, but why wouldn’t it when the voices for the last two events, backed up by no less than the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, are the best you could possibly find for the great monuments of Handel and Bach?Admittedly, Bach’s cornucopia of celebration isn’t an oratorio like...
As part of the Christmas Festival at St John's Smith Square, the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conductor Stephen Layton, performed parts one, two, three and six of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, with soloists Katherine Watson, Iestyn Davies, James Gilchrist and Neal Davies. St John's was filled with a capacity audience.
Bach wrote the work as a...
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...