Christmas Oratorio. Ensemble Resonanz presents Bach s
Christmas Oratorio as Hausmusik among friends. With a small cast and no large choir, the ensemble has arranged 30 arias, recitatives, choruses, and chorales from Bach s masterpiece in its own version. The score remains untouched, but electric guitar and Hammond organ sound in the continuo, there’s only one trumpet, and the whole ensemble joins in the chorales. View here.
Delibes’s
Sylvia. Conductor: Kevin Rhodes, choreography: Manuel Legris after Louis Mérante. With Kiyoka Hashimoto, Masayu Kimoto, and Davide Dato. Production from November 2018. Register for free and view here.
2 pm ET: VOCES8 Live from London presents
The week in classical: Live from London Christmas; Louis Andriessen premiere – review Fiona Maddocks
Amid the blizzard of images crazing our senses this year, one stood out last week: an elite choral ensemble from Oakwood, Alabama – the Aeolians – singing their hearts out to a riotous
Star Wars-meets-gospel version of Joy to the World, all wearing masks. They encapsulated at once the struggle and determination of musicians to perform. They made us think afresh, in sickness or health, what it is to fill our lungs with air. As each singer from this Seventh-day Adventist university choir drew breath, the fabric of their masks inhaled and exhaled with them, muffling their rich sound. They weren’t deterred. Nothing could quench their pleasure at singing.