Composer: Philipp Wolfrum
Performer: Hamelner Kantorei, Paweł Brożek, Joo-Anne Bitter, Anne Schuldt, Martin Berner, Hans Christian Hinz
Orchestra: Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie
Conductor: Stefan Vanselow
Number of Discs: 2
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Christophorus
Catalogue: CHR77458
Release: 2021
Size: 400 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Ein Weihnachtsmysterium, Op. 31 (Live)
CD 01
Part 1
01. No.1 Vorspiel
02. No.2 Die Ankündigung des Engels
03. No.3 Maria Lobgesang
04. No.4 Zwischenspiel
05. No.5 Die Geburt Jesu
06. No.6 Die Verkündigung des Engels an die Hirten
CD 02
Part 2
01. No.7 Einleitung
02. No.8 Maria an der Krippe
03. No.9 Die Hirten bei der Krippe
04. No.10 Die drei Könige aus dem Morgenlande
05. No.11 Schluss-Scene
Philipp Wolfrum (1854-1919) was one of the most influential personalities in German musical life around 1900. He worked as a choirmaster, organist, composer, professor and university music director in Heidelberg and friendships connected him with Engelbert Humperdinck, Max Reger and Richard Strauss; he also maintained close contact with the Bayreuth circle around Richard Wagner’s widow Cosima. Liszt and Wagner were his great idols and this is also noticeable in his compositions.
His opus magnum is Ein Weihnachtsmysterium, first performed in 1898, in which the birth of Jesus is pictorially staged. The conception for this more than one-and-a-half-hour work is influenced by medieval mystery plays and Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. The musical material consists of well-known German Christmas carols, which are processed in high chromatic harmony and late Romantic melody as well as with masterfully colorful orchestral treatment and are reminiscent of Wagner’s operas or Liszt’s symphonic poems, in places also of Brahms, Humperdinck or Reger.