SCO Bach's Christmas Oratorio Queen's Hall Edinburgh 28th November 2024 Review
Scottish Chamber Orchestra Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight was appropriately being performed in a former church (albeit not a German Lutheran one) and that, for me, added a lot to the atmosphere of this performance.
This evening there was only time for Cantatas numbers 1, 2 and 3 out of the six that make up this complete work, but that did not matter as each was planned to be performed on a different day over the church celebrations of the birth of Jesus.
This Christmas Oratorio was originally conceived to be part of Leipzig’s Christmas celebrations in 1734 and into the new year of 1735, and it was here that Bach held the post of Kantor. As well as teaching music, another of his main duties was to oversee religious music at its two prominent churches, the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche.
The idea of telling an unfolding large scale narrative over several stand-alone individual performances, all linked together by a story teller (the evangelist) was a bold one, but also an idea borne out of necessity. There simply was not time to put all of the works together into the time available for the strict format of a special day German Lutheran service. One cantata for each day’s service was how the public were going to hear this work, so we were all tonight given a Christmas present by the SCO in having the opportunity to hear the first three together and get a larger overview of just how remarkable this work really is.
I think Bach himself would be surprised that this work was still being performed nearly 300 years later as it is sometimes all too easy to forget that he was a working composer/musician who was often working to deadlines for very specific occasions and sometimes maybe never expected that music to be used again. His output of music was, however, far more than required for specific tasks at times and this allowed Bach the opportunity to rework some of his earlier compositions into this large scale spectacle of music. This reuse of earlier works by composers at this time was not unknown and not considered anything out of the ordinary.
Bach is pretty much throwing every compositional technique that he had at his disposal into this project his use of music for sinfonia, chorus, choral, arias and evangelist is at an inspirational level that few people ever achieve. This is classic Bach, sublime melodies, harmony and counterpoint, and even now so much of what he created here is still the cornerstone for so much of contemporary popular music. Listen a little closer to some of this music and there are the origins of the wonderful vocal harmonies of ABBA and so many other contemporary bands/musicians.
Conducted tonight by Václav Luks, this was a very different arrangement of the SCO than other concerts that I have reviewed throughout the year. This may have been a reduced number of SCO musicians performing but they brought this work to wonderful life, and added to them was the SCO Chorus (45 people) who under the supervision of chorus director Gregory Batsleer did justice to this work tonight. Also tonight, Julia Doyle (Soprano), Helen Charlston (Mezzo Soprano), Robin Tritschler (Tenor) and Florian Störtz (Bass Baritone) more than met the many vocal challenges with which Bach’s score presented them.
Each of these cantatas has a very different emotional shade to them as best fits their respective subject matter, but overall I was surprised just how much brightness, and sheer joy of living Bach infused these works with, and they were often to me at odds with how I imagined a German Lutheran church service of this period to be. These works, performed on a day, were certainly not for a sombre trip by the congregation to their church, but a joyous celebration. Also when you take into account that the congregation would have been provided with the text of these works beforehand so that they could join with the chorus in singing the choral parts, then a very different view of the day starts to emerge. Here Bach was providing wonderful music which, although fitting for its religious occasion and setting, was also giving the congregation a performance, almost a theatrical depiction at times of what many people would expect to be celebrated in their church at Christmas, and the SCO and everyone else performing this work tonight gave us all a little taste of what being there 300 years ago might have sounded and felt like. This work was also performed in German adding to its authenticity.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This evening there was only time for Cantatas numbers 1, 2 and 3 out of the six that make up this complete work, but that did not matter as each was planned to be performed on a different day over the church celebrations of the birth of Jesus.
This Christmas Oratorio was originally conceived to be part of Leipzig’s Christmas celebrations in 1734 and into the new year of 1735, and it was here that Bach held the post of Kantor. As well as teaching music, another of his main duties was to oversee religious music at its two prominent churches, the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche.
The idea of telling an unfolding large scale narrative over several stand-alone individual performances, all linked together by a story teller (the evangelist) was a bold one, but also an idea borne out of necessity. There simply was not time to put all of the works together into the time available for the strict format of a special day German Lutheran service. One cantata for each day’s service was how the public were going to hear this work, so we were all tonight given a Christmas present by the SCO in having the opportunity to hear the first three together and get a larger overview of just how remarkable this work really is.
I think Bach himself would be surprised that this work was still being performed nearly 300 years later as it is sometimes all too easy to forget that he was a working composer/musician who was often working to deadlines for very specific occasions and sometimes maybe never expected that music to be used again. His output of music was, however, far more than required for specific tasks at times and this allowed Bach the opportunity to rework some of his earlier compositions into this large scale spectacle of music. This reuse of earlier works by composers at this time was not unknown and not considered anything out of the ordinary.
Bach is pretty much throwing every compositional technique that he had at his disposal into this project his use of music for sinfonia, chorus, choral, arias and evangelist is at an inspirational level that few people ever achieve. This is classic Bach, sublime melodies, harmony and counterpoint, and even now so much of what he created here is still the cornerstone for so much of contemporary popular music. Listen a little closer to some of this music and there are the origins of the wonderful vocal harmonies of ABBA and so many other contemporary bands/musicians.
Conducted tonight by Václav Luks, this was a very different arrangement of the SCO than other concerts that I have reviewed throughout the year. This may have been a reduced number of SCO musicians performing but they brought this work to wonderful life, and added to them was the SCO Chorus (45 people) who under the supervision of chorus director Gregory Batsleer did justice to this work tonight. Also tonight, Julia Doyle (Soprano), Helen Charlston (Mezzo Soprano), Robin Tritschler (Tenor) and Florian Störtz (Bass Baritone) more than met the many vocal challenges with which Bach’s score presented them.
Each of these cantatas has a very different emotional shade to them as best fits their respective subject matter, but overall I was surprised just how much brightness, and sheer joy of living Bach infused these works with, and they were often to me at odds with how I imagined a German Lutheran church service of this period to be. These works, performed on a day, were certainly not for a sombre trip by the congregation to their church, but a joyous celebration. Also when you take into account that the congregation would have been provided with the text of these works beforehand so that they could join with the chorus in singing the choral parts, then a very different view of the day starts to emerge. Here Bach was providing wonderful music which, although fitting for its religious occasion and setting, was also giving the congregation a performance, almost a theatrical depiction at times of what many people would expect to be celebrated in their church at Christmas, and the SCO and everyone else performing this work tonight gave us all a little taste of what being there 300 years ago might have sounded and felt like. This work was also performed in German adding to its authenticity.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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