Frequently Bought Together
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
Product Description
CD Description
Riccardo Chailly conducts Leipzig’s famous Gewandhausorchester in Johann Sebastian Bach’s glorious collection of Christmas cantatas known as the Christmas Oratorio. An outstanding vocal cast includes Martin Lattke as the evangelist, acclaimed English soprano Carolyn Sampson and the voices of the Dresdner Kammerchor.
The six parts which make up the Christmas Oratorio tell the biblical story from Christ's birth to the adoration of the shepherds and the Magi, and the flight in to Egypt to escape Herod's slaughter of the infants. Having first conducted the Gewandhausorchester in 1986, Riccardo Chailly's association with Leipzig is now only one year less than Bach’s. Played on modern instruments, Chailly’s Bach beautifully demonstrates that vivid, stylistically aware performance is not the exclusive preserve of period instrument ensembles. This is the third of Bach's large-scale masterpieces recorded by the Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly and released on Decca and follows critical acclaim for The Brandenburg Concertos, released in January 2010 and the St. Matthew Passion, released in March 2010.
The six parts which make up the Christmas Oratorio tell the biblical story from Christ's birth to the adoration of the shepherds and the Magi, and the flight in to Egypt to escape Herod's slaughter of the infants. Having first conducted the Gewandhausorchester in 1986, Riccardo Chailly's association with Leipzig is now only one year less than Bach’s. Played on modern instruments, Chailly’s Bach beautifully demonstrates that vivid, stylistically aware performance is not the exclusive preserve of period instrument ensembles. This is the third of Bach's large-scale masterpieces recorded by the Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly and released on Decca and follows critical acclaim for The Brandenburg Concertos, released in January 2010 and the St. Matthew Passion, released in March 2010.
Product Description
2CD
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent new addition to the XMas Oratorios
28 Jan 2011
By J. F. Laurson
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
An imaginary* conversation with Riccardo Chailly about the Christmas Oratorio should include this bit:
Maestro Chailly--recording Bach with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, isn't that a little daring, even anachronistic, at a time when seemingly all orchestral baroque recordings are made by HIP ensembles.
"What exactly do you mean, with the `hip'?"
Oh, `Historically Informed Performance'... when an orchestra or chamb--
"Ah, but you must be kidding me. The Gewandhaus Orchestra, they play Bach every Sunday for the last two hundred years in the Thomaskirche. They accompany the Thomanerchoir who have been singing with Bach himself. My players have an unparalleled ease and artlessness of playing baroque music."
But they're playing on modern instruments...
"Yes. Of course, why do you ask? The Gewandhaus is not a period instrument baroque ensemble, of course. But you ask about `historically informed', no?. And I suggest that you would be hard pressed to find any ensemble that plays so naturally this music. Perhaps what you get is a `Third Way' Bach performance style. I think they sound marvelous and the music, you can tell it is in their blood. I hope you can hear the recordings when they come out."
Well, the recordings have come out, one by one, and the Christmas Oratorio, the last of the three, (preceding it were the Brandenburg Concertos, St. Matthew Passion; the St. John Passion will join maybe next year and the Mass in B minor is slated for 2014) hits the market just in time for the Advent and Christmas season. The Brandenburg Concertos is a tight, quicksilverish performance that veers, unsteadily, between big-band and PI-band that skates through Bach with great immediacy and ease--but ultimately not quite my cup of tea. The Matthew Passion and the Christmas Oratorio are more naturally suited to the orchestral treatment... I've skimmed the Matthew Passion recording with interest (and every intention to dig deeper into, perhaps around Easter). The six-partite Christmas Oratorio from 1734 (composed for the services starting at Christmas Day and ending with Epiphany) has a certain glorious ring to it, an earthy festiveness. That's in part due to the instrumentation and well possibly because of the sources from which Bach parodied most of it; his secular cantatas.
I have my personal favorites for the Christmas Oratorio--Karl Richter (Archiv, 1961) and Helmut Rilling (Hänssler, 1999)--but Chailly's is the kind of recording you pop into the player and without the need or wish to compare immediately jumps at you, delights, convinces. In an ideal sense, this is truly a hybrid not just of a smallish ensemble (I'm guesstimating something shy of three dozen players and the same in singers) with a big sound but also one that combines the comfortable feel of old with the transparency of new. Mostly, it packs an irresistible punch and a tremendously lively choir that does jubilating in jubilantly-nourished style. (Not like some one-to-the-part choruses where I admire the voices but can't help assuming that they're probably hungry.) All the singers, four out of five of which I don't know, are very good, natural, unaffected, the supreme Carolyn Sampson (Angel, indeed!) among them as primus inter pares. Anyway, a smashing success not for individual instances or moments but the overall impression. It has probably just become the recording I'll now reach for, before any other.
* not entirely imaginary, actually--much, if not most of this, is grafted from my interview with Riccardo Chailly for WETA. This review is taken from "Dip Your Ears, No.105" at ionarts.
Maestro Chailly--recording Bach with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, isn't that a little daring, even anachronistic, at a time when seemingly all orchestral baroque recordings are made by HIP ensembles.
"What exactly do you mean, with the `hip'?"
Oh, `Historically Informed Performance'... when an orchestra or chamb--
"Ah, but you must be kidding me. The Gewandhaus Orchestra, they play Bach every Sunday for the last two hundred years in the Thomaskirche. They accompany the Thomanerchoir who have been singing with Bach himself. My players have an unparalleled ease and artlessness of playing baroque music."
But they're playing on modern instruments...
"Yes. Of course, why do you ask? The Gewandhaus is not a period instrument baroque ensemble, of course. But you ask about `historically informed', no?. And I suggest that you would be hard pressed to find any ensemble that plays so naturally this music. Perhaps what you get is a `Third Way' Bach performance style. I think they sound marvelous and the music, you can tell it is in their blood. I hope you can hear the recordings when they come out."
Well, the recordings have come out, one by one, and the Christmas Oratorio, the last of the three, (preceding it were the Brandenburg Concertos, St. Matthew Passion; the St. John Passion will join maybe next year and the Mass in B minor is slated for 2014) hits the market just in time for the Advent and Christmas season. The Brandenburg Concertos is a tight, quicksilverish performance that veers, unsteadily, between big-band and PI-band that skates through Bach with great immediacy and ease--but ultimately not quite my cup of tea. The Matthew Passion and the Christmas Oratorio are more naturally suited to the orchestral treatment... I've skimmed the Matthew Passion recording with interest (and every intention to dig deeper into, perhaps around Easter). The six-partite Christmas Oratorio from 1734 (composed for the services starting at Christmas Day and ending with Epiphany) has a certain glorious ring to it, an earthy festiveness. That's in part due to the instrumentation and well possibly because of the sources from which Bach parodied most of it; his secular cantatas.
I have my personal favorites for the Christmas Oratorio--Karl Richter (Archiv, 1961) and Helmut Rilling (Hänssler, 1999)--but Chailly's is the kind of recording you pop into the player and without the need or wish to compare immediately jumps at you, delights, convinces. In an ideal sense, this is truly a hybrid not just of a smallish ensemble (I'm guesstimating something shy of three dozen players and the same in singers) with a big sound but also one that combines the comfortable feel of old with the transparency of new. Mostly, it packs an irresistible punch and a tremendously lively choir that does jubilating in jubilantly-nourished style. (Not like some one-to-the-part choruses where I admire the voices but can't help assuming that they're probably hungry.) All the singers, four out of five of which I don't know, are very good, natural, unaffected, the supreme Carolyn Sampson (Angel, indeed!) among them as primus inter pares. Anyway, a smashing success not for individual instances or moments but the overall impression. It has probably just become the recording I'll now reach for, before any other.
* not entirely imaginary, actually--much, if not most of this, is grafted from my interview with Riccardo Chailly for WETA. This review is taken from "Dip Your Ears, No.105" at ionarts.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chailly, Leipzig, Dresden ChambChoir, Soloists: JS Bach: Christmas Oratorio .... Joyful Sounds of the Advent Season
26 Dec 2010
By Dan Fee
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
In the Christian yearly liturgical calendar, we are in Advent. The basic story is the coming of an Anointed One, and the dramatic story of divine revealing, for better and for worse; and composers across long centuries have certainly taken this occasion to write more bright and lasting music than we could actually exhaust, even in a single Advent season. Who could quibble if someone said that JS Bach's Christmas Oratorio ... actually a set of six Advent cantatas ... was always and ever, among the best of our legacy musical celebrations?
Here Chailly in Leipzig completes a recent trio of new JS Bach releases. The other two were the St. Matthew Passion, and the Brandenburg Concertos, let loose in sequence. Both earlier sets were very fine, and could even be considered among the top choices for either the passion or the concertos. But to my ears right now, as good as the previous two releases from Leipzig were, this Christmas Oratorio sweep up all prizes.
Like the other two releases, this oratorio is extremely stylish, despite being played on modern instruments. I doubt that anybody who liked the oratorio much will complain about not having gut strings and small bore woodwinds or brass at hand. Leipzig players blow away all the cobwebs in our historical performance attics; with the sheer brilliance, depth, and brilliance of the music remaining - Center Stage. Spot lit. No passing whiff of dusty associations calls attention to the continuo and ripieno manners, as anything other than a means of making fine music. Thanks to these alert Leipzig players, we hear the oratorio as a vivid act of real, daily life ... no museum diorama connotations. The joy and magic of this old work are brought right into the current century; but without betraying a live, colorful, and dare I call it fun?, baroque style.
The chorus is the Dresden Chamber Choir. Kudos to Jorg Genslein their director, and many thanks to each chorus member for singing his or her heart out. The chorus is small enough to draw us in, in the more intimate chorales, and big enough to impress in the narrative and declamatory music. Weigh the lift and light of their opening celebration, and I think you would be hard pressed to find a choir that sounded more jubilant, or more precise.
Soprano soloist is Carolyn Sampson, and her early music performance credentials need no defense. Wiebke Lehmkuhl is alto soloist. Her name is new to me; but she matches the vocal high standards, as well as the heartfelt performance involvement, of the other singers and players. The tenor Evangelist is Martin Lattke, another new name. He is the real deal, all pure silver vocally, and incapable of even one boring or lackluster note as he tells his familiar Advent story. Wolfram Lattke takes the tenor arias, capturing their varied moments, both as story and as music. His aria, Frohe hirten, takes off, nearly lighter than air, and singing-dancing with frosty snowflaked gleam and effervescence. That moment alone will make lots of others among a very distinguished cast seem more earthbound than before. Konstantin Wolff is bass. He can be gruff in a simple, hearty way; or reflective, or lively as the moments demand - and his technique is never in question. His aria, Grosse Herr, is completely purged of awful Puritanical fears, in favor of sheer jubilance; a purer praise would be hard to imagine, vocally.
The larger flow across all six Advent cantatas is beautifully managed among all singers and players. For once those typical Bach chorales do not seem like oddly archaic Lutheran ritual reminders from a far lost time in past baroque centuries; but instead come right into the ongoing musical mix. The chorales draw a listener into All Things Advent, all still moving, all still breathing. Old-fashioned background hints of traditional German musical stiffness in playing and singing JS Bach are gone, gone, gone ... and that in Leipzig, the Cantor's home city, no less.
Some similar welcome is expressed in very lovely ways by the continuo players who manage to expressively transform their tonal lights to shine in adornment just so, on the effortless flow of shifting musical atmospheres without making us change rooms completely.
Kudos to that continuo group then. Christian Giger, cello. Christian Okert, double bass. David Petersen, bassoon. Michael Schonheit, chamber organ I. Choir soloist Maria Stosiek is just holly red berry perfect, in her small but beautiful work in the famous, familiar Echo aria, Flosst mein Heiland.
Advent for me has always meant Handel's Messiah, first and foremost among typical Advent vocal or choral works, generously supplemented and enhanced by all the carols traditional and modern, and further scaled upwards by the very great Bach oratorio for the season. Chailly here finally recalibrates my existing Advent musical balances. As when JS Bach actually came to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA - and so continues so joyously, right to the latest, breaking Advent moments.
Herrscher des Himmels. Wowie, zowie, and yes.
Don't be afraid of this one, folks; it is simply beautiful, resonant Advent drama. Go Tell It On The Mountains... over the hills, and everywhere.
Here Chailly in Leipzig completes a recent trio of new JS Bach releases. The other two were the St. Matthew Passion, and the Brandenburg Concertos, let loose in sequence. Both earlier sets were very fine, and could even be considered among the top choices for either the passion or the concertos. But to my ears right now, as good as the previous two releases from Leipzig were, this Christmas Oratorio sweep up all prizes.
Like the other two releases, this oratorio is extremely stylish, despite being played on modern instruments. I doubt that anybody who liked the oratorio much will complain about not having gut strings and small bore woodwinds or brass at hand. Leipzig players blow away all the cobwebs in our historical performance attics; with the sheer brilliance, depth, and brilliance of the music remaining - Center Stage. Spot lit. No passing whiff of dusty associations calls attention to the continuo and ripieno manners, as anything other than a means of making fine music. Thanks to these alert Leipzig players, we hear the oratorio as a vivid act of real, daily life ... no museum diorama connotations. The joy and magic of this old work are brought right into the current century; but without betraying a live, colorful, and dare I call it fun?, baroque style.
The chorus is the Dresden Chamber Choir. Kudos to Jorg Genslein their director, and many thanks to each chorus member for singing his or her heart out. The chorus is small enough to draw us in, in the more intimate chorales, and big enough to impress in the narrative and declamatory music. Weigh the lift and light of their opening celebration, and I think you would be hard pressed to find a choir that sounded more jubilant, or more precise.
Soprano soloist is Carolyn Sampson, and her early music performance credentials need no defense. Wiebke Lehmkuhl is alto soloist. Her name is new to me; but she matches the vocal high standards, as well as the heartfelt performance involvement, of the other singers and players. The tenor Evangelist is Martin Lattke, another new name. He is the real deal, all pure silver vocally, and incapable of even one boring or lackluster note as he tells his familiar Advent story. Wolfram Lattke takes the tenor arias, capturing their varied moments, both as story and as music. His aria, Frohe hirten, takes off, nearly lighter than air, and singing-dancing with frosty snowflaked gleam and effervescence. That moment alone will make lots of others among a very distinguished cast seem more earthbound than before. Konstantin Wolff is bass. He can be gruff in a simple, hearty way; or reflective, or lively as the moments demand - and his technique is never in question. His aria, Grosse Herr, is completely purged of awful Puritanical fears, in favor of sheer jubilance; a purer praise would be hard to imagine, vocally.
The larger flow across all six Advent cantatas is beautifully managed among all singers and players. For once those typical Bach chorales do not seem like oddly archaic Lutheran ritual reminders from a far lost time in past baroque centuries; but instead come right into the ongoing musical mix. The chorales draw a listener into All Things Advent, all still moving, all still breathing. Old-fashioned background hints of traditional German musical stiffness in playing and singing JS Bach are gone, gone, gone ... and that in Leipzig, the Cantor's home city, no less.
Some similar welcome is expressed in very lovely ways by the continuo players who manage to expressively transform their tonal lights to shine in adornment just so, on the effortless flow of shifting musical atmospheres without making us change rooms completely.
Kudos to that continuo group then. Christian Giger, cello. Christian Okert, double bass. David Petersen, bassoon. Michael Schonheit, chamber organ I. Choir soloist Maria Stosiek is just holly red berry perfect, in her small but beautiful work in the famous, familiar Echo aria, Flosst mein Heiland.
Advent for me has always meant Handel's Messiah, first and foremost among typical Advent vocal or choral works, generously supplemented and enhanced by all the carols traditional and modern, and further scaled upwards by the very great Bach oratorio for the season. Chailly here finally recalibrates my existing Advent musical balances. As when JS Bach actually came to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA - and so continues so joyously, right to the latest, breaking Advent moments.
Herrscher des Himmels. Wowie, zowie, and yes.
Don't be afraid of this one, folks; it is simply beautiful, resonant Advent drama. Go Tell It On The Mountains... over the hills, and everywhere.
›
Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
