BWV 248: 12 Days of Christmas in 3 Hours

Autograph in Bach’s hand of the first page of his Christmas Oratorio (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Last night the audience in Herbst Theatre had its first opportunity, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, to listen to the full resources of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO), led by its new Music Director Richard Egarr. PBO got the jump on Christmas with a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 248, his Christmas Oratorio. Bach identified only three of his sacred compositions as oratorios, the other two being BWV 11 (Ascension Oratorio) and BWV 249 (Easter Oratorio). Both of these are relatively short.

BWV 248, on the other hand, is a cycle of six cantatas, each for one of the twelve feast days of the Christmas period. The six days in which those cantatas were to be sung are as follows:

1. First Day of Christmas
2. Second Day of Christmas
3. Third Day of Christmas
4. New Year’s Day
5. First Sunday in the New Year
6. Feast of the Epiphany

Taken as a whole, this amounts to about three hours of music. It is unlikely that Bach ever intended this music to be performed or experienced in its entirety during a single sitting. However, this is the way most concert-goers expect to listen to it. Most likely, the only venue in the United States to present this music as Bach intended would be the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan, with its series of “Bach services” (assuming that the church still has those weekly Sunday services organized around Bach’s cantatas).

Three hours is lengthier than the duration of most concert experiences. Nevertheless, Egarr conducted his resources at a brisk pace. With only one intermission between the third and fourth cantatas, there was never a sense that the tempo was dragging. The PBO resources, with different instrumentation for each of the six cantatas, reflected all the nuances of Egarr’s energy, thus seizing and maintaining rapt attention on audience side. Egarr also told his audience not to be shy about clapping between the movements, so to speak; and applause would break out after several of the more stimulating moments of the score, particularly when vocal solos were involved.

Among the vocalists, tenor Gwilym Bowen carried the most weight in the “role” of Evangelist. His narrative was then embellished by selections for different combinations of tenor, soprano (Lydia Teuscher), contralto (Avery Amereau), and bass-baritone (Ashley Riches). The full text was provided in both the original German and English translation, and much was to be gained in following the musical interpretation of the narrative unfolding across the six cantata texts.

Ultimately, however, this was “Egarr’s show.” During his past performances in Herbst as a visiting conductor, he consistently displayed a keen sense of chemistry to keep his listeners engaged in whatever he happened to be performing. Now, with the “authority” of his directorship, that chemistry is still very much with him. No end of engaging insights emerged from his interpretation of each of the six cantatas, endowing each with the individuality of its text while maintaining an overall sense of the “festive spirit” that permeates the entire oratorio.