Bach’s Christmas Oratorio has, recently, not been performed in the UK as often as one would wish. This December, however, performances have proliferated, almost to the point where it has dislodged Handel’s Messiah from its near-ubiquitous place in the schedules. It has been wonderful to encounter it again in a pair of contrasting interpretations that take radically different approaches to Bach’s exploration of the Christmas narrative, its theology and meaning.
Bach would never have expected his work to be performed in concert in a single evening. Written in 1734, it consists of six cantatas intended for liturgical use between Christmas Day and the feast of Epiphany. Not all of the music was original. Bach liberally recycled a number of secular cantatas composed the same year, though his choice of material always seems stunningly apt: the extraordinary opening, one of the greatest in all music, with its trumpets, drums and woodwind flourishes, might now strike us as an unforgettable evocation both of God’s majesty and mankind’s elation at his intervention in human affairs, but it was originally written, to a very different text, to celebrate the birthday of Maria Josepha, wife of the elector of Saxony.
The oratorio can be equally effective done on the grandest or the smallest of scales. Last Saturday’s London Philharmonic performance found Vladimir Jurowski deploying the 70-strong London Philharmonic Choir and an impressive international lineup of soloists, though the orchestra itself was reduced to an ensemble of roughly 40 players. At the opposite end of the scale, the London Bach Singers and Feinstein Ensemble, under their flautist-director, Martin Feinstein, gave the work at Kings Place with just four singers and a single player to each instrumental line.
More pertinent, perhaps, than the issue of scale, is that of completeness. Bach intended the cantatas to be presented in two Leipzig churches on the same day, though in the event, only four of them were heard at the Thomaskirche, while the Nikolaikirche gave all six. Some interpreters consequently drop two of the cantatas in performance; Feinstein omitted the fourth and fifth, contentiously, perhaps, since the fourth, marking Jesus’s naming and circumcision in a series of slow-moving, meditative ceremonials, contains some of the most profound music of the entire work. Jurowski and the LPO gave us the complete score, in a performance that took time to catch fire, but which developed into something wonderfully moving.
The opening was curiously short on majesty and elation. It took a while for the choral balance to settle and for the polyphony to emerge with ideal clarity, though there was some tremendous singing later on, above all in the reflective opening to the fourth cantata and dexterous counterpoint at the start of the fifth. The sheer weight of the choral sound spoke volumes in the chorales, with their communal expressions of joy and devotion. Jurowski, his interpretation gaining in depth and emotional range as it progressed, was keenly alert to those sudden moments of darkness when Bach, alluding to his own St Matthew Passion, offsets the excitement of it all by reminding us of Christ’s eventual crucifixion.
The soloists were strong. Jeremy Ovenden, the detached, no-nonsense Evangelist, included some graceful coloratura in his arias. Soprano Maria Keohane sounded rapturous in Flösst Dein Namen. Stephan Loges was the forthright bass. Schlafe, Mein Liebster lay a bit low for mezzo Anke Vondung, though she delivered Bereite Dich, Zion with wonderful elan. The playing, meanwhile, was often exceptional, as exquisite oboe, cor anglais and violin obbligatos twined round the soloists’ voices. Trumpets and drums were thrilling, nowhere more so than in the closing pages, where Bach returns to his passion music, triumphantly decorated in anticipation of mankind’s eventual redemption.
Feinstein, though very different, was comparably insightful. This was very much a chamber performance, rooted in the give and take of a fine ensemble, each member of which seems instinctively aware of what his or her fellows are doing. Feinstein played first flute, directing part of the proceedings with a series of graceful gestures as he did so. Small forces confer a blinding clarity on the score, entirely appropriate for a work that celebrates the coming of light into the world, though you could argue that single strings sometimes make woodwind and brass too prominent, and the chorales need a greater weight of sound to be effective. The four singers, however, were exceptional, their voices finely blended in the choruses. Charles Daniels was the committed Evangelist, Faye Newton the bright-toned, effortless soprano. Schlafe, Mein Liebster, ironically, lies fractionally high for countertenor Tim Travers-Brown, though his tone is beautiful. Bass Ben Davies sounded terrific in Grosser Herr, O starke König. It was a very different experience from Jurowski’s performance, but in its way equally spellbinding.
