Festive music with a big red Christmas bow around it: the Christmas Oratorio season has started

What Mariah Carey knows, Johann Sebastian Bach knew much earlier: write a good Christmas hit and you can get it again every year. If you are not careful, three centuries later there is even a whole tradition attached to it: in Bach-loving Netherlands it is Christmas Oratorio is now a permanent fixture during the holidays. This season, two leading ensembles will travel throughout the country to perform Bach’s Christmas cracker in churches and concert halls.

On paper, the performances are comparable: each played on authentic instruments, with a small-scale choir and four international soloists. The Bach Society plays with its own orchestra and under the direction of Lars Ulrik Mortensen, who leads from the chest organ. The Netherlands Chamber Choir tours with its own chef Peter Dijkstra and the Flemish B’Rock Orchestra. At the kick-off of the tour in the Concertgebouw, the chamber choir announced on Tuesday that Dijkstra has signed a contract to stay on until at least 2028.

It Christmas Oratorio cannot boast the same long performance tradition as the St. Matthew PassionBach’s other seasonal hit, but has now firmly established itself in the annual concert calendar. Understandable, because here you hear Bach at his most festive. The opening alone, with its timpani blows and sparkling baroque trumpets: Jauchzet, frohlocket! When you hear that, it really is Christmas.

Genius of the master

Bach worked more economically than Carey: instead of coming up with all new material, he recycled a whole pile of music that he previously composed for birthdays and parties. That is the genius of the master: with Bach the sublime always goes hand in hand with the secular. Take existing festive music, paste another text underneath and draw a big red bow around it, and you suddenly have a God-praising and successful Christmas oratorio. Simple? No, only Bach can do that.

Bach could not have imagined that nowadays we would be so crazy as to listen to the entire piece in one go. He devised six separate cantatas, each intended for a different occasion between the birth of Jesus (December 25) and the day that the Christmas decorations can go back up (January 6). All six in a row is a long time, also because it is Christmas Oratorio (unlike the Matthäus) doesn’t really tell a continuous, increasingly intense drama.

Complete performances, such as with the NKK, are not commonplace – four cantatas is more manageable and common. It is a shame that the last cantata usually falls by the wayside, because it contains such excellent music. It opening choir full of exciting twists and falling basses, the intense soprano scene, or the great ending – one of Bach’s most swirling coral settings ever.

The Bach Society, which performs four cantatas, makes the fortunate choice to omit numbers two and three and thus retains the glorious sixth. As soon as it arrives, you notice that the entire ensemble perks up in the Grote Kerk of Naarden: the first three quarters of the concert sometimes seem a bit pale. The orchestra is having fun, but Mortensen’s flamboyant circular gestures only occasionally give the choir wings. Perhaps you will soon start singing more subdued in a church?

Well, certainly not evangelist Daniel Johannsen: he turns it into a kind of Bach-the-musical with his embellished emotions. Fortunately, soprano Carine Tinney is there to put things in order: beautiful sound, strong text expression. Her last solo scene (Du Falscher) and the duet with oboe and echo voice are highlights.

Dynamic range

With the Nederlands Kamerkoor the performance becomes more of a whole. With twenty singers (compared to twelve in the Bach Society, including soloists), the choir has a greater dynamic range and will have a broader color palette under Dijkstra. Sung a cappella and by heart I’m a deiner Krippen hereagain in that fine sixth cantata, gives you goosebumps. Among the soloists, it is Arttu Kataja who stands out with his endearing baritone voice: a very difficult aria like Grosser Herr few people can sing with such apparent ease.

Dijkstra may primarily be a choir conductor, but the most striking accents are often in the orchestral part. B’Rock lives up to its name: if you were to watch the swinging double bassist Tom Devaere without sound, you wouldn’t know whether he played jazz or baroque. And maybe that’s how it should be, because it Christmas Oratorio is, above all, exuberant party music.

The Christmas Oratorio by the Dutch Bach Society.

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