Nativity scene at Church of St Francis in Budapest Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org
ADAMS: El Niño, A Christmas Oratorio
Sunday 23 December at 6.00pm on RNZ Concert
Rosemary Joshua (soprano), Measha Brueggergosman (mezzo), Davóne Tines (baritone), Daniel Bubeck (countertenor), Brian Cummings (countertenor), Steven Rickards (countertenor), Handel Secondary School Children's Choir, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Vladimir Jurowski
Recorded in the Konzerthaus, Berlin (EBU)
John Adams Photo: Creative Commons 3.0
The American composer tells the traditional Christmas story with dreamlike, careful and imaginative music from the Annunciation to Mary, the visit to Elisabeth, the birth and worship of Jesus, Herod's massacre of the innocent and the flight to Egypt.
Adams chooses texts from different eras and not only from the Bible. He includes words from the prophets Haggai and Isaiah, the Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Dario, the Wakefield mystery play, Martin Luther's sermons, passages from the Gospel of Luke and Gabriela Mistral's "The Christmas Star". In one of the choruses John Adams quotes the Latin song "O quam preciosa" by Hildegard von Bingen.
