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Christmas Oratorios from Bach, Berlioz and Britten
As it’s only just December, I feel it’s a little early for Christmas carols - so instead I’ve been easing myself into festive mode with three seasonal oratorios. First up is a fresh, vibrant account of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio from Stephen Layton and the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, whose partnership is proving to be a very fruitful one...
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Although Bach called these six yuletide cantatas, composed in 1734, an oratorio, he intended them to be performed separately: on the first, second and third days of Christmas, the Feast of the Circumcision, the first Sunday after New Year and the Feast of Epiphany (the visit of the Magi). Yet the composer clearly regarded them as a set, using the same theme for the first chorale...
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Music seems to course through the very veins of the singers and players on this Bach: Christmas Oratorio album
*****
Three weeks from now, on Sunday December 22, Stephen Layton will conduct what has become one of the signal concerts in the seasonal calendar at St John’s, Smith Square in London – a performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. This two-CD set, featuring the same...
Building a Library: Handel Messiah
THE BEST RECORDING: STEPHEN LAYTON
Stephen Layton's musicians bring an unparalleled freshness to this familiar work, combining power with a delicacy faithful to Handel's Baroque sensibility. The music Handel composed for Messiah is meant to convince audiences of a vision beyond religious factionalism, and Layton rightly shapes his reading around the oratorio's...
Few compilations of repurposed music have been as embraced by musicians and listeners as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium has been in the years since it was reintroduced to audiences in 1857. Created for celebration of Christmas-season liturgies at Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche and Thomaskirche in the winter of 1734 – 1735, Bach’s score made use of music composed for several secular...
Earlier this year I was very taken with Stephen Layton’s recording of Bach’s St John Passion (review). That recording was made with his other choir, Polyphony, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Now Layton has recorded another of Bach’s great choral works, the Christmas Oratorio. I fancy this new recording, though set down in Cambridge, is linked to Layton’s work as director of the...