Weihnachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio), in six parts, BWV 248 (BC D7)
Released ahead of the 2016 holiday season, this recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, entered a field where there was plenty of competition, but the performance by Scotland's historically oriented Dunedin Consort have a great deal to recommend them. For one thing, conductor John Butt seems to understand the dynamic of this somewhat troublesome work better than most other interpreters. Much of the music consists of reworkings of earlier cantata movements, some of them secular. This was of course typical of Bach's ...
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Released ahead of the 2016 holiday season, this recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, entered a field where there was plenty of competition, but the performance by Scotland's historically oriented Dunedin Consort have a great deal to recommend them. For one thing, conductor John Butt seems to understand the dynamic of this somewhat troublesome work better than most other interpreters. Much of the music consists of reworkings of earlier cantata movements, some of them secular. This was of course typical of Bach's way of working, and a convincing performance such as Butt's provides conveys not only the differences among the six cantatas that compose the oratorio, but also some of Bach's thinking as he put the work together. Butt varies the forces used for the cantatas, which makes sense (they were originally performed separately, on different Sundays), and he forges attractive contrasts between them. In so doing, he also strikes a middle path between the one-voice-per-part readings fashionable...
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