The International House of Music continues the warmest festival of the winter capital. According to the plan of the creators of the Christmas Spiritual Music Festival, its programme can collect works from different eras, styles and religious traditions. One of the central works on the current poster is Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. It was performed by the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra and the Intrada Vocal Ensemble.

On one stage that evening, musicians from different countries – Russia, Austria and Germany – performed. And each of them has their own story connected with Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio”. The German conductor, Hans-Christophe Rademann, was five when he first heard it.

“The “Christmas Oratorio” is an important part of German music, and also of world music. I remember when I was a child, I used to sing the oratorio in the chorus very often, becoming an adult, already at the conductor’s desk, and with different orchestras I performed this work in different countries around the world,” he says.

I won’t even remember how many of these were performed. Russian colleagues on the stage tried to calculate.

“Conductor Hans-Christophe Rademann performed this work several hundred times, and in December he already performed several dozen”, – says the artistic director of the Intrada ensemble Ekaterina Antonenko.

Soloists from Austria and Germany have similar stories, and oratorios have been known since childhood.

“I sing it all over the world, with different conductors, in different interpretations, both ancient instruments and modern ones,” says soloist Tobias Berndt (Germany).

For Russian performers, the Intrada ensemble, and guest soloists, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is a new work in the repertoire.

“It needs to sound like it should, because it is not opera arias. We have been working with HansChristophe Rademan for several days now, there have been very fruitful rehearsals, and I have seen this work in a different way,” said Polina Shamayeva, soloist with the New Opera Theatre.

“Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is a cycle of six cantatas, imbued with a single mood and united by the development of the plot and the theme of Christmas. Three of them were performed during the evening.