Friday 17 December 2021

Bach's Christmas Oratorio will be moved from the Cathedral, Skjold church and Åsane cultural center to Grieghallen on Friday 17 December at 19.30. Everyone who has a ticket will be contacted on Monday 13 December.

Bach's jubilant celebration of Christmas with orchestra, choir and brilliant soloists. Bach's life-affirming Christmas Oratorio is for many a dear part of the Christmas tradition. The oratorio consists of six cantatas that were composed for the Christmas celebration in Leipzig in 1734.

Back then, the cantatas were performed over six public holidays, while at our concerts we get to hear the first three. The work opens with a festive movement for choir and orchestra, with trumpets and timpani playing central roles in the celebration of Jesus' birth. The second cantata, which is devoted to the meeting between heaven and earth, is preceded by a pastoral. In the third cantata, the shepherds rush to Bethlehem, and Bach again presents the festive instruments trumpet and timpani.

The soloist quartet is of the highest class; the Swiss tenor Fabio Trümpy as the narrating evangelist, the soprano Beate Mordal, whom we know from previous concerts and opera performances, Marianne Beate Kielland, our leading mezzo-soprano in this repertoire, and the German baritone Sebastian Noack.

Jan Willem de Vriend, an expert in historical performance practice and a popular conductor with both audiences and musicians, conducts.

Program
Johann Sebastian Bach: Christmas Oratorio, parts 1-3

Beate Mordal, soprano
Marianne Beate Kielland, mezzo-soprano
Fabio Trümpy, tenor
Sebastian Noack, baritone
Edvard Grieg Choir
Edvard Grieg Youth Choir
Håkon Matti Skrede, choir master
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra

CANCELED /Thursday 16 December at 19.30 in Åsane cultural center
CANCELED /Friday 17 December at 19.30 in Skjold church
CANCELED / Monday 20 December at 19.30 in Førdehuset
CANCELED /Wednesday 22 December at 19.30 in Bergen Cathedral