Schütz Weihnachtshistorie (Christmas Story); Praetorius Motets

On this CD:

1. Weihnachtshistorie, Christmas cantata
Composed by Heinrich Schutz
Performed by David Evan Thomas, Emma Kirkby, Taverner Consort

2. Polyhymnia caduceatrix Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (No. 21)
Composed by Michael Praetorius
Performed by David Evan Thomas, Emma Kirkby, Taverner Consort

3. Polyhymnia caduceatrix Puer natus in Bethlehem (No. 12)
Composed by Michael Praetorius
Performed by David Evan Thomas, Emma Kirkby, Taverner Consort

4. Polyhymnia caduceatrix Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (No. 10)
Composed by Michael Praetorius
Performed by David Evan Thomas, Emma Kirkby, Taverner Consort

5. Polyhymnia caduceatrix In dulci jubilo (No. 34)
Composed by Michael Praetorius
Performed by David Evan Thomas, Emma Kirkby, Taverner Consort

Tracks:

Sinfonia
Evangelist 'Es Begab Sich Aber Zu Derselbigen Zeit'
Den Engel 'Furchtet Euch Nicht'
Evangelist 'Und Alsbald War Da Bei Dem Engel'
Die Menge Der Engel 'Ehre Sei Gott In Der Hohe'
Evengelist 'Und Da Die Engel Con Ihnen Gen Himmel Fuhren'
Die Hirten Auf Dem Felde 'Lasset Uns Nun Gehen Gen Bethlehem'
Evangelist 'Und Sie Kamen Eilend'
Die Weisen Aus Morgenlande 'Wo Ist Der Neugeborne Konig Der Juden'
Evengelist 'Da Das Der Konig Herodes Horete'
Hohepriester Und Schriftgelehrte 'Zu Bethlehem Im Judischen Lande'
Evangelist 'Da Berief Herodes Die Weisen'
Herodes 'Ziehet Hin'
Evangelist 'Als Sie Nun Den Konig Gehoret Hatten'
Der Engel 'Stehe Auf, Jospeh'
Evangelist 'Und Er Stund Auf'
Der Engel 'Stehe Auf, Joseph'
Evangelist 'Und Er Stund Auf'
Beschluss 'Dank Sagen Wir'
Sei Gegrusset, Maria, SWV 333 - Andreas Scholl
Rorate Coeli Desuper, SWV 322 - Susanne Ryden
Joseph, Du Sohn David, SWV 323 - Susanne Ryden
Hodie Christus Natus Est, SWV 315 - Gerd Turk
Heute Ist Christus Geboren, SWV 439 - Andreas Scholl

Schütz Weihnachtshistorie (Christmas Story); Praetorius Motets

Average customer rating:

All round excellent recording
Beautiful .. but very English

Schütz Weihnachtshistorie (Christmas Story); Praetorius Motets
Heinrich Schutz , Michael Praetorius , Emma Kirkby , David [bass] Thomas , Taverner Consort Choir & Players , and Andrew Parrott
Manufacturer: Angel Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

General Christmas | Holiday | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Opera & Vocal | Holiday | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

General Christmas | Holiday Music | Special Features | Music

Opera & Vocal | Holiday Music | Special Features | Music
Similar Items:

Buxtehude: Sacred Cantatas, Vol 1 /Kirkby * Leblanc * Harvey * Purcell Quartet
Buxtehude: Harpsichord Works

ASIN: B000005GO7
Release Date: 2002-12-23

Tracks:

Weihnachtshistorie: Intro Oder Eingang
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Es Begab Sich Aber Zu Derselbigen Zeit
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium I: Der Engel Zu Dem Hirten Auf Dem Felde
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Und Alsbald War Da Bei Dem Engel
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium II: Die Menge Der Engel
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Und Da Die Engel Von Ihnen Gen Himmel Fuhren
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium IV III: Die Hirten Auf Dem Felde
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Und Sie Kamen Eilend
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium IV: Die Weisen Aus Morgenlande
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Da Das Der Konig Herodes Horete
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium V: Hohepriester Und Schriftgelehrte
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Da Berief Herodes Die Weisen Heimlich
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium VI: Herodes
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Als Sie Nun Den Konig Gehorest Hatten
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium VII: Der Engel Zu Joseph
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Und Er Stund Auf
Weihnachtshistorie: Intermedium VIII: Der Engel Zu Joseph
Weihnachtshistorie: Evangelist Und Er Stund Auf
Weihnachtshistorie: Beschluss
Four Motets: Wachet Auf, Ruft Uns Die Stimme
Four Motets: Puer Natus in Bethlehem
Four Motets: Wie Schon Leuchtet Der Morgenstern
Four Motets: In Dulci Jubilo

Customer Reviews:

All round excellent recording.......2005-11-15

I bought this recording on CD in the late 1980s - one of my very first CDs. I have never grown tired of this recording and I recommend it to all music lovers.
The Christmas Historia is well performed and the voices and instruments all make attractive sounds.

The four motets by Praetorius are performed with great style, colour and zest. Parrott follows Praetorius's instrumentations quite closely and Wachet Auf and In Dulci Jubilo are particularly impressive.

A very good disc of Christmas music. Please investigate!

Beautiful .. but very English.......2005-02-13

This recording, made in 1985 and 1986 for EMI at London’s Abbey Road studios, is one of a series of “beauties” made by Andrew Parrott and his Taverner Consort, and although I am not giving it five stars (for reasons which I will enunciate in a moment), there can be no doubt that the CD has a great deal going for it: excellent soloists, brilliant engineering and, last but not least, incredibly beautiful music. Heinrich Schütz’s “Weihnachts-Historie” was first performed in 1664 at the Court of Dresden in Saxony and consists of recitatives with texts from the Gospels, rather like the later Passions of J. S. Bach, but in this case interrupted by so-called “intermedia”, passages for one, two or three voices with words of the angel, the high priests or Herod. The part of the evangelist is here taken by Nigel Rogers, the angel by the truly angelic Emma Kirkby, other parts are sung by David Thomas, bass, Tessa Bonner, soprano, and other well-known early music specialists. The whole is accompanied by the Taverner Players with violins, a viola, a bass violin, tenor, bass and great bass viols, violone, curtal, recorders, cornetts, sackbuts, trumpets, timpani, theorbo and organ. The introduction to Schütz’s piece having been lost, Andrew Parrott and Hugh Keyte have re-composed it.

My problems with the recording begin right there. The re-composed beginning sounds just too bright and airy for 17th century German music. Of course, nobody knows what it really sounded like back then, but anyone who is aware of Protestant German tradition will be taken aback at the typically English light-heartedness with which the piece begins; the German tradition is generally much “heavier”, seeming to be formed by the suffering of the 30 Years’ War (1609 – 1649). And this “criticism”, if such it is, applies to the rest of the Schütz piece, which generally sounds too joyful and too English, including – surprisingly – the pronunciation and declamation of the German texts: Nigel Rogers as evangelist cannot convince me completely with his declamation of the sacred text; and Emma Kirkby, wonderful though she is, still seems to have had some problems pronouncing German. Then there is the thorny problem of the soprano voices: Andrew Parrott opts for female singers, adjudging that he could scarcely find boy trebles who have the necessary training in both music and German. Somehow, this changes the “feeling” of the whole piece. After listening to the Parrott CD, I dug out a recording from 1986 published by the German audiophile company Dabringhaus und Grimm. The Schütz piece is there performed by the Musicalische Compagney with a smaller instrumental ensemble and all-male voices. David Cordier’s soprano-like countertenor is probably not to everyone’s taste, but I found it, on balance, to evoke the spirit of the 17th century better than Emma Kirkby or any female voice. And Harry Geraerts as the evangelist makes a much more convincing job of declaiming the text in the German protestant tradition so that I immediately felt more at home with his version than with Nigel Rogers (whose voice is, nonetheless, delightful).

The Parrott disc is complemented by four motets by Michael Praetorius, pieces that are familiar as hymns to every German churchgoer, but in these versions are nowadays seldom heard. Here, too, Parrott goes for a full and very joyful sound, something that seems to me to be quite foreign to the German Lutheran tradition. As, however, I have never heard any other recordings of these pieces, I shall leave it at that. The concluding number, “In dulci jubilo” is performed at incredible volume by all six trumpets and all the other instruments plus choir and can give one an idea of what the music might have sounded like if it had been possible to put together musical forces of this magnitude in North Germany in the first half of the seventeenth century, although I have a suspicion that it is very unlikely to have happened.

All in all, this is a beautiful disc, but raises some questions as to “authenticity”.

Schütz: Weihnachtshistorie (The Nativity)

Average customer rating:

Brilliant recording!

Schütz: Weihnachtshistorie (The Nativity)

Manufacturer: Harmonia Mundi
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Motets | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000000777
Release Date: 1990-09-27

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant recording!.......2001-12-11

This is a brilliant recording of an overlooked Christmas treasure. I love everything about this recording, and after almost 10 years of owning it, it is still my favorite classical Christmas album, and I even listen to it during other seasons.Schutz was a master of the early baroque and is too often overlooked currently. His Christmas story is lavish,stylish, lively and bright. It's like an elegant and fluffy dessert. Under the direction of Rene Jacobs, the work never sounds rushed, nor does it ever drag for a moment. The recording is nicely balanced so that neither voices nor instruments (string or brass) suffer.
Martin Hummel as the evangelist sings in a delicious style- there is nothing "secco" about his recitative- his voice is a pleasure to hear with a somewhat intimate quality. The instrumental work here is like enjoying a sweet ripe piece of fruit. The baroque violins are intensely sweet sounding,again "light and fluffy". The cornetti are perfect: perfectly in tune and the perfect example of how close this instrument is in character to the human voice. I am particularly pleased that they have chosen to use viols to accompany the angels rather than violins- a truly heavenly combination. The viols have an intensity of tone that wouldn't come through on violins.

Average customer rating:

A clear and bright Christmas

Schütz: Weihnachtshistorie (The Nativity)

Manufacturer: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Motets | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Classical | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B000027O4U
Release Date: 1992-12-07

Customer Reviews:

A clear and bright Christmas.......2005-02-06

The music is delicate and extremely fine. The polyphony is used at once but in two different ways, with repetitions of some words from one voice to another and with the vocalizing of some vowels in some strategic words. The form this polyphony takes is most often that of a canon or a fugue. It announces further developments but remains very simple. The instruments, when they are not used as plain accompaniment, are also used as voices in a way and they enter the canon and fugue form along with the voices themselves. But once again it all remains simple and the performing is very clear, light and in a way un-amplified. And at the same time the composer does not hesitate to use some high dives or high jumps in the music or the singing, one high-pitched voice suddenly climbing high on the scale from a lower-pitched voice or note. But these vocalizations and effects are delicately and simply wrought out avoiding all excessive ornamentation, each case aiming at emphasizing one syllable or word and not at showing the virtuosity of the singer or musician. It gives a very pleasant musical evocation of the birth of Jesus that does not want to conjure any awe or excessive admiration in us : it is more a beautidul story than an impressive miracle. But these pieces of music are also tales and the main interest is the vision of Mary given in this recording. In the Christmas Story Mary is in a totally secondary position. She is the mother and that's all. After the birth, the danger coming from Herod is emphasized by the fact that the three Magi go to Jerusalem and Herod to announce the birth of a new King of the Jews. It is then Herod that entrust the Magi with finding the child. They will do so but will not return to Jerusalem. Another element gives Joseph a very important role in the story. He is the one who is in touch with God through an angel in his dreams. Thus he learns that he has to get away to Egypt and then later on to come back. Mary is thus erased from the picture. In the next piece (SWV 333) we have the Annunciation, a double annunciation since Mary gets the message of her future pregnancy and at the same time she learns that Elizabeth is also pregnant (the future John the Baptist) after an intervention of the Holy Ghost who is going to visit Mary later on. But no mention whatsoever of the redeeming mission Mary gets then to free humanity of Eve's sin. The next piece given by René Jacobs (SWV 322) goes even farther since it is the evocation of the visitation by the Holy Spirit. It is reduced to dew and a rain of justice that plants a seed in the earth where it can germinate and grow into the Saviour. Mary has completely disappeared and been replaced by earth. Then in piece SWV 323 Mary is reduced to « dein Gewahl » for Joseph, that is to say his spouse (normally and today it is a masculine noun, but here it is used as a neutral noun that can generically cover either wife or husband), and the Angel explains to Joseph that Mary is pregnant with a son that was brought to her by the Holy Spirit. Joseph is thus valorised by being the only character of importance in this story but also by being called the son of David. The recording ends with two small pieces that just sing the birth of Christ. This general picture in this recording of an erased Mary and a Joseph who is pushed forward seems to represent a Protestant approach of Christmas. We could compare with the vision of the Virgin in Hildegard von Bingen for instance which is completely different since Mary becomes the essential character of the story because she redeems humanity of their sinful fate.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

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