The Greatest Christmas Story of All

I am not using the term "greatest" loosely or ill-advisedly.  Johann Sebastian Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorium ("Christmas Oratorio") is a magnificent masterpiece, telling the main events of the beloved Christmas story in music that is every bit as beautiful and compelling as the master's great Passions or the Mass in B Minor.

The Christmas Oratorio shares with the Passions the use of a tenor Evangelist to present the narrative portions of the story in recitative, with the other soloists and the chorus portraying the various characters in the story.  In between the narrative sections, the various arias, choruses, and chorales comment on the main action.

Actually, though, the Christmas Oratorio was neither designed nor intended for concert performance.  It consists of six separate cantatas which were performed at church services on six different days of the Christmas season in 1734-35 in Leipzig, as shown here:

Part 1:  Christmas Day (Dec. 25) -- the birth of Jesus.

Part 2:  Dec. 26 -- the annunciation to the shepherds.

Part 3:  Dec. 27 -- the adoration of the shepherds.

Part 4:  New Year's Day (Jan. 1) -- the circumcision and naming of Jesus.

Part 5:  Sunday after New Year (Jan. 5) -- the journey of the Magi.

Part 6:  Epiphany (Jan. 6) -- the adoration of the Magi.

The total work lasts for over 2.5 hours, not counting an intermission, and is thus a major effort to perform in full.  Many choral groups get around the problem by presenting it in two separate concerts, or by giving a selection of several of the cantatas.

As their pre-Christmas offering for this year, the Cellar Singers of Orillia ON presented a concert performance of Parts 2, 4, and 5, with organ accompaniment.  This apparently-odd selection makes sense when you notice that these are the cantatas which do not require trumpets and drums.  The other three parts (#s 1, 3, and 6) are all grand celebratory works in D major, and the trumpets and drums are prominent.  Trying to perform those parts with organ alone would sell the audience short.  But #s 2, 4, and 5 are gentler, more pastoral, more meditative in tone, and an understanding and sensitive organist can work wonders in representing the sounds of oboes, horns, flutes, and strings.

"Understanding" and "sensitive" are terms which describe Blair Bailey's playing very well.  The organ always provided firm support but never overwhelmed either soloists or choir.  Playing a work like this on the organ is a far tougher assignment than you might think, with 80 minutes of Bach's always-challenging music including some of his most florid and intricate writing.  

As tradition dictated (the same tradition followed by Handel in Messiah), the scene of the shepherds in the fields was prefaced by Bach with a pastoral sinfonia -- and this sinfonia thus became the curtain-raiser for the entire performance.  Although Bach did not use the Italian name pifa, the music serves exactly the same scene-setting function.  Unlike Handel's much simpler melody, the Bach sinfonia is a complex web of interweaving lines of counterpoint.  Bailey selected apt registers of his instrument to highlight the different lines.  I've never really appreciated, with an orchestra, the sheer technical complexity of this gentle and apparently (on the surface) self-effacing music.

The tenor soloist has the lion's share of the solo work, giving not only the Evangelist's narrations but also having a major solo or duet in each of these three cantatas.  In Bach's day, these parts would likely have been divided among different singers but tenor Charles Davidson handled them all -- and it's been many a year since I've heard a singer with a voice so ideally suited to the Evangelist role.  With a combination of light tone colour, flexible phrasing and passage work, no audible break from the lower register to the head tone, and immaculate diction, Davidson was virtually ideal.  A stellar performance.  I hope to hear him at some future date in the Evangelist role of one of the two great Passions.

Mezzo soprano Jennifer Enns Modolo was just as fine.  In the cradle song, "Schlafe, mein liebster" she found a soothing, aptly maternal tone without the voice becoming at all plummy or thick in tone.  A different but just as well-judged tone in the trio, "Ach! wann wird die Zeit erscheinen?," made her interruptions of the soprano and bass firm and clearly audible without becoming stentorian or overwhelming.  A delight to the ear.

Soprano Jennifer Taverner matched well with her colleagues, singing lightly and flexibly.  Her angel recitative soared effortlessly, and her voice caressed the notes in the famous echo aria,  "Flösst, mein Heiland."  Altogether, another rewarding presentation of a solo role requiring more subtlety than flash and dash.  Mary-Jayne Van Pypen provided the echo, and definitely deserves to be mentioned for achieving a near-perfect match to Taverner's voice and style.  This is by no means as easy as it sounded in this performance.

Bass Andrew Tees was something of a weak link.  His bigger, more dramatic voice and style of singing was out of keeping with the rest of the soloists (and with the tone and style of the performance as a whole).  There were also a couple of synchronisation problems in his duet with Taverner, and with the organ in his major solo.

The 40 voices of the Cellar Singers sang the complex polyphony of "Ehre sei Gott" in Cantata 2 and "Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen" in Cantata 5 with great energy, fully mastering the brisk tempo and the intertwining vocal parts.  Their warm, firm tone in the chorales gave a fine contrast.  Tonal blend was first-rate at all times, as was diction.  If the diction lacked the machine-gun precision which some choirs use, I felt the results were all the more musical for that.

Artistic Director Mitchell Pady brought many dynamic nuances to his interpretation of the chorales -- not, perhaps, the most "authentic" approach  But this is a style that I find more rewarding in a concert performance where my role is to listen, rather than to join in as I would likely have done in the Lutheran services of Bach's day.  Throughout the evening his tempi were nicely-judged for variety, giving plenty of lift to the music while avoiding the sometimes-ridiculous extremes of speed favoured by some modern interpreters.  I especially enjoyed the lilt which developed in Pady's conducting of the numerous triple-time movements, a lilt which reminded us of the secular dance music that Bach also composed with such fluency and skill.

This was such a persuasive and delightful performance of the three quieter cantatas of the Christmas Oratorio that I regret having missed this choir's performance of #s 1, 3, and 6 which took place a couple of years ago.