Music for Advent and Christmas

[Tsaraslondon]

I should add now (in complete agreement with Vandermolen):
Gerald Finzi - In Terra Pax

Actually i got in first with that one (message #93) 

[Tsaraslondon]

A very fertile ground indeed !


Among the more traditional fare, the various Christmas albums by well-loved sopranos are number one. Particularly the Decca LP with various favourites sung by Tebaldi, Sutherland and Price. A particularly winning compilation, as it cleverly allotted old chestnuts based on vocal and intepretive strengths. Has it been issued on CD ?

The Price/Karajan Christmas album has rarely been out of the catalogue, and has been reissued many times on CD. The Sutherland was also reissued a few years back in their Classic recitals series. Not sure about the Tebaldi. I also love Schwarzkopf's Christmas album with Charles Mackerras conducting.  Though, as is often the case in these albums, many of the arrangements are totally over the top, there is a very gentle version of Silent Night, for soprano, strings, 2 horns and guitar, which is apparently how it was first performed.

[Christo]

Actually i got in first with that one (message #93) 

In that case I and in complete agreement with both Tsaraslondon and Vandermolen, I would like to add to the list:
Gerald Finzi - In Terra Pax 

(I only learned the piece revently - from the new Naxos Christmas anthology with the City of London Choir that I'm playing often these days)

                         

[Elgarian]

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/al.asp?al=CDH55048&f=christmas%20baroque

I'm not a great enthusiast for Christmas music these days, but when this came up a few months ago in Hyperion's 'bottom ten' sale, it seemed worth a shot - an already budget-priced CD at less than half-price. It turned out to be entirely delightful, and Telemann's Festive Suite, in particular, charmed me to bits. So this will get some plays during the next few weeks.

[Tsaraslondon]

Gerald Finzi - In Terra Pax 

(I only learned the piece revently - from the new Naxos Christmas anthology with the City of London Choir that I'm playing often these days)

                     

The performance I got to know the work from is unfortunately no longer available. It was conducted by the late Richard Hickox and has Norma Burrowes and John Shirley-Quirk as soloists. The one that Decca now have in their catalogue is conducted by David Hill, but, to my mind, doesn't capture its magic quite as well as the Hickox. I have yet to hear the Naxos version.

I have never heard it performed live, but would love to. For me, it captures more than any other piece of Christmas music I know, that sense of wonder and excitement I used to feel as a child on Christmas Eve.

[Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich]

This is the truth, sent from above...

Every year again: RVW - Fantasia on Christmas Carols

[Christo]

This is the truth, sent from above... Every year again: RVW - Fantasia on Christmas Carols

Great! But. Since this cd only appeared last year, this can only be its second season ... 

[vandermolen]

I should add now (in complete agreement with Vandermolen):
Gerald Finzi - In Terra Pax

Coincidentally I ordered the Naxos Christmas CD today and then saw your message (I guess that we so called Braga Santos Experts have extra-sensory perception  ). I ordered the CD for the lovely Finzi work.

[karlhenning]

Some of you will have heard this one already; but in case it may be new to someone . . . .

[Elgarian]

Some of you will have heard this one already; but in case it may be new to someone . . . .

Well it was new to me, Karl. Quite extraordinary. Even if I hadn't known the title or the words, I'd have felt the sense of ... what? A new and numinous strangeness? A strange new numinousness? I'd just been writing in another thread about the perception changes that music can bring about, and this is a prime example. I'm noticeably different at the end compared to how I was at the beginning.

I'm struck by the length of the piece, which seems perfectly judged. As it concludes, I feel I need to stop and take stock of what's just been happening. In trying to take stock, I listened to it again two more times. I think there's a quality of ... oh, I could be so easily misunderstood here, but the word I want to use is 'holiness'. Perhaps reverence would be better. The music seems to announce that something has happened here. Something strange and whose meaning may be beyond us; we can only see the beginning of a landscape that stretches far off, over there.

Some of the most striking moments are when the clarinet note seems to hang in the air, gradually falling off into imperceptibility as the singing takes its place - like those drawings by Rossetti where you can't tell where the pencil shading ends and the white paper begins. But the emotional effect of it is like 'handing something on' - the clarinet setting something up which it can't fulfill on its own, but which the singing can.

I think this is fabulous Karl. Thank you.

[karlhenning]

Many thanks, from my heart, Alan.

[Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich]

[RVW/Hickox/Chandos/Christmas Carols]

Great! But. Since this cd only appeared last year, this can only be its second season ... 

Really  . I listened to it so intensely, it felt like I knew the CD for 100 years now... I even listened to it in the summer.

[dimmer]

I am greatly enjoying the disk of Rosenmuller's Weihnachtshistorie performed by Cantus Colln. Rosenmuller is an important figure unjustly neglected today, but the music is magnificent.

[Que]

I am greatly enjoying the disk of Rosenmuller's Weihnachtshistorie performed by Cantus Colln. Rosenmuller is an important figure unjustly neglected today, but the music is magnificent.

Interesting suggestion! And welcome to the forum.



Not that it matters much, but found this comment on Amazon notable: 

Actually, Rosenmueller never wrote any such thing as a "Weinachtshistorie." Only the first track is a setting of the Gospel for Christmas Day from Luke 2. The other pieces are motets, very much in the style of Schuetz, written for various occasions and probably never heard together until this recording. All the better for the listener; the variety and splendor of these 'sacred symphonies' makes for a richer concert than the usual recitativo of a Nativity oratorio.

Q

[Christo]

[RVW/Hickox/Chandos/Christmas Carols]

Really  . I listened to it so intensely, it felt like I knew the CD for 100 years now... I even listened to it in the summer.

I agree and must confess: I did the same.  The finest piece being the recently completed `The First Nowell' (1958, left incomplete at RVW's rather premature death).

This season, there's another late cd premiere release with his "Folk Songs of the Four Seasons". The new Naxos Christmas cd (`In Terra Pax') includes the Winter section, but there's alsoa new recording of the whole thing that was much praised in these columns by Vandermolen a.o. Did you hear it already?

                                     

[rubio]

I've mostly played the Christmas Oratorio when it comes to Christmas music lately, and it's one of the Bach works I love the most. But this Kozena CD seems quite interesting. Does anybody here know this Ryba work?

[Elgarian]

Some of you will have heard this one already; but in case it may be new to someone . . . .

Just thought I'd add a little to what I said before. I've now listened to this several more times since that first day, and it seems if anything finer now than it did then. That dialogue between clarinet and choir is pretty compelling stuff; like two different kinds of questions meeting, and not finding answers, but only another kind of question. The sense of occasion, of a response to some not-understood event, is still the most striking thing. I'm quite shocked by how much I seem to be able to find something in it, given that it's so far removed from my usual listening.

[Que]

High time to revive this thread for perhaps this year's round of discussion on Christmas music!




Recently got this cute little Christmas CD with organ music.

René Saorgin plays the organ of the Sainte Chapelle du Château Ducal de Chambéry for the first four tracks, and the remainder of the disc - works by Claude Beningne Balbastre ( 1727- 1799) - on the Serassi organ (1807) of the Cathédrale de Tendre (pictured)

The pieces by Balbastre, 12 parts from Recueil de noëls formant quatre suittes, avec des variations pour le clavecin et le piano-forte, cleverly written for organ, as well as harpsichord and piano, take pride of place. Together with another "noël" - a short organ piece on a traditional Christmas theme - by Louis Claude Daquin (1694-1772). Virtuosic and stylish variations on familiar and unfamiliar (at least to me) Christmas themes, which seem just Saorgin's cup of tea. That combined with the historical organs make, as I said, a cute disc - very enjoyable.

Q

[vandermolen]

Two of my favourites (+ Finzi's beautiful 'In Terra Pax')

[Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich]

I second the RVW/Chandos/Hickox mentioned before. As every year