Festival Bach – Christmas Oratorio
24 hours offers you 10 x 2 tickets for the Bach concert: Christmas Oratorio on Friday November 18, 2022 at the Cathedral of Lausanne at 8 p.m.
Festival Bach – Christmas Oratorio
Klaus Fleckenstein
What a joy to find for the sixth time the Tölzer Knabenchor, founded in 1956 in Bad Tölz, in Upper Bavaria, by Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, then 19 years old, and directed since 2021 by the no less eminent Michael Hofstetter. Alongside this mythical, world-famous choir, remarkable soloists, including two members of the choir, and the equally famous Concerto Köln, founded in 1985 in Cologne. The Christmas Oratorio is not a simple juxtaposition of six cantatas but a continuous narration, although spread over time (at the premiere, thirteen days separated the hearing of the first and sixth parts). This perfect masterpiece, created in Leipzig for the six festive days of Christmas 1734/1735, from December 25 to January 6, Epiphany Day, tells one and the same story, that of the birth of Jesus which begins with the census of Bethlehem and ends with the adoration of the Magi. Its strength also owes a lot to the concentration of a text that draws heavily on the Gospels according to Luke and Matthew. In the first cantata resounds the melody of the chorale of the Passion Herzlich thut mich verlangen, which chorale concludes the sixth and last cantata. That finitude is engraved from birth, for Bach and his contemporaries, was significant. And if the author here takes up elements of pre-existing cantatas, he also takes up elements of profane cantatas – he would never have done the opposite: going from the sacred to the profane.
Further information: www.festivalbach.ch