Dear Reader,
we most warmly thank you for your interest in the Henle Blog. We also look forward to your visits in the coming year and promise interesting postings on musical questions concerning music texts.
As in 2013 we would like to draw your attention to a recording of the Christmas oratorio, but this time not to the famous one by Johann Sebastian Bach, but rather to the oratorio composed by Camille Saint-Saëns. The French composer wrote his Oratorio de Noël within only 12 days in December 1858 for a performance in the famous Madeleine Church in Paris where he had been employed as an organist since the beginning of that year. It is a simple, very melodious work that shows how close musically the church sphere then stood to the opera stage in Paris.
Record: 1976
Christ Church Mainz/Germany
Label: Profil (Hänssler)
Venue: Christ Church Mainz/Germany
Verena Schweizer, soprano
Edith Wiens, soprano
Helena Jungwirth, alto
Friedreich Melzer, Tenor
Kurt Widmer, bass
Hans-Joachim Bartsch, organ
Barbara Biermann, harp
Mainz Bach Choir
Mainz Bach Collegium
Conductor: Diethard Hellmann
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Your authors of the Henle Blog
Norbert Gertsch
Peter Jost
Norbert Müllemann
Annette Oppermann
Dominik Rahmer
Wolf-Dieter Seiffert