6pm
Three Cathedral Choirs
Academy of Ancient Music
Conducted by Edward Higginbottom
Worcester Cathedral
Buy tickets: £39/£33/£26/£18/£10

Bach - Christmas Oratorio

Soloists: Lorna Anderson (Soprano)
Sarah Connolly (Mezzo)
Andrew Tortise (Tenor)
Michael George (Baritone)

The Academy of Ancient Music is one of the world's first and foremost period-instrument orchestras. Concerts across six continents and over 250 recordings since its formation by Christopher Hogwood in 1973 demonstrate the AAM's pre-eminence in music of the Baroque and Classical periods.

The Christmas Oratorio was not written until 1734. Because of the pressure of work, and since at that time there were limited opportunities for repeat performances, Bach borrowed extensively from other pieces that he had written previously, both sacred and secular. This was standard practice for the period; Handel's arias and choruses, for instance, are often re-workings of earlier pieces. Bach adapted this existing music to fit the words of the Christmas Oratorio and composed much new material as well. Although collectively the individual movements of the Christmas Oratorio form a continuous musical account of the Christmas story, Bach did not conceive the oratorio as one uninterrupted work, in the manner of Handel's oratorios, but rather as six separate cantatas to be performed on six separate occasions - the three days of Christmas (25th, 26th and 27th), New Year's Day, the Sunday after New Year and the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th). The fact that the instrumental requirements for each cantata differ quite considerably is a further indication that Bach never intended them to be performed as one work. Although today we customarily think of this oratorio as a single six-part entity (and rightly so, in keeping with Bach's intention), we need to know that Bach himself never conducted the entire oratorio (nor even half of it) as a single entity.