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Classical, Orchestral, Choral, Vocal | DSD64 (*.dsf, tracks), 1-bit/5.64 MHz
Run Time: 02:18:13 | 5.77 GB + 5% Recovery
Label: Challenge Records | Release Year: 2007
“Jan Willem de Vriend oversees a joyful account of Bach's festive music with light-footed responses to dance rhythms. I can whole heartedly commend this issue for its expressive warmth, its disciplined choral singing and its natural declamation.”
Bach’s celebrated Christmas Oratorio forges a link between birth and deliverance: the birth of Christ is not only the birth of light, of innocence; this joyful event is equally characterized by suffering. In this respect the Christmas Oratorio is akin to the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion. Guilt and innocence, suffering and deliverance are present from the moment a mother holds her child in her arms.
This book on Bach’s Christmas Oratorio lends credence to Jan Willem de Vriend’s musical interpretation of the work. It comprises an interview with De Vriend himself, carried out by the musicologist Frits de Haen, a short history of how the work came into being and an article on the liturgical significance of the six cantatas by the internationally renowned musicologist Robin A. Leaver.
Jan Willem de Vriend shares his thoughts on the Christmas Oratorio:
‘The Combattimento Consort Amsterdam has always performed the complete Christmas Oratorio with only two exceptions. On these two occasions the concert hall did not want a complete performance and the choice was left to us which movements to leave out. However, this is in fact an impossible choice, as in my view the work forms a single entity. So, it has happened on occasion that we have performed four cantatas. And even though prior to the concert we thought that on the one hand it would be fine to finish earlier, as it turned out – and I think I can speak for all my colleagues – after the performance we felt it a great pity after all, not to have included those two cantatas. During a performance of the complete cycle we have become accustomed to pausing between each cantata, to insert just a short break of around five minutes before beginning the following cantata. Incidentally, this is just one of the ways to divide up the work; I could also imagine that the cycle could be spread out, that one decides: “This morning I will perform one, then this evening another, with another cantata the following day.” Nevertheless, the point is that even when a performance is spread out over a number of days, as happened in Bach’s time, the work still continues to function as a unified whole. I am absolutely convinced that the churchgoers of the time had a far greater retention of the music, that the music remained more firmly entrenched in their memory until the following church service. Just compare how it is these days. After the concert, you may be sitting in your car and you switch on the radio to hear if there are any traffic jams reported, so you keep hearing fragments of music and as a result of this a large part of your recent musical experience is erased. I myself am glad that after performing a work it stays in my head for some time. Perhaps this was much more often the case in those days. As far as this is concerned, the effect of such a cantata would have been far stronger and of longer duration back then. Something similar also applies in the case of the various tonalities. In view of the fact that even temperament was nowhere near as widely in use in those days, a much greater differentiation was experienced between the various keys with their individual characteristics. With the advent of modern tuning, this entire sensibility to the different keys has vanished.’
Jan Willem de Vriend is the artistic director of Combattimento Consort Amsterdam and since 2006 the chief conductor and artistic director of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to having served as concertmaster with various ensembles, De Vriend developed a career as a conductor with several orchestras both in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Italy Germany, Sweden, as well as China and Australia. Opera conducting has come to play a significant role. He has led Combattimento Consort Amsterdam in unknown operas by Gassmann, Rameau, Heinchen and Haydn, among others, as well as familiar operas by such composers as Monteverdi, Handel, Rossini and Mozart. For the opera houses of Lucern, Strasbourg, Barcelona and Enschede, he has conducted operas by Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Strauss and others.
Tracklist:
Personnel
Combattimento Consort Amsterdam , Cappella Amsterdam
Daniel Reuss, choirmaster
Malin Hartelius soprano Kristina Hammarström, alto
Jörg Dürmüller, tenor
Detlef Roth, bass
Jan Willem de Vriend, director
