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*****
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’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...
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...
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...
The folk-steeped a cappella choral music of Estonian Veljo Tormis (born 1930) is unlikely to set the world ablaze; but this generous selection from the Holst Singers provides consistently pleasurable listening and proves that there is more to this richly inventive music that merely esoteric agreeableness.
Even more celebrated at home than his more internationally famous countryman Arvo Pärt,...
