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An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece – though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio the choir often plays a central role, and there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. Protestant composers took their stories from the Bible, while Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints, as well as to Biblical topics. Oratorios became extremely popular in early 17th-century Italy partly because of the success of opera and the Catholic Church's prohibition of spectacles during Lent. Oratorios became the main choice of music during that period for opera audiences.
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The Taverner Choir, Consort and Players is a British music ensemble which specialises in the performance of Early and Baroque music. The ensemble is made up of a Baroque orchestra, a vocal consort and a Choir. Performers place emphasis on a historically informed performance practice and players work with restored or replicated period instruments.
The English Concert is a baroque orchestra playing on period instruments based in London. Founded in 1972 and directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock for 30 years, it is now directed by harpsichordist Harry Bicket. Nadja Zwiener has been orchestra leader (concertmaster) since September 2007.
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist, currently a Professor of Music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas, and as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century. He is famed among classical musicians and aficionados for his increasingly influential theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per choral line. Rifkin argued: "So long as we define 'chorus' in the conventional modern sense, then Bach's chorus, with few exceptions, simply did not exist." He is best known by the general public, however, for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s, with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records.
The Tölzer Knabenchor is a German boys' choir founded in 1956 in the Bavarian town of Bad Tölz and, since 1970, based in Munich.
John Hardy is an English-born composer who has been commissioned by the Arts Council/National Lottery, the BBC, Welsh National Opera and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, among others. His work includes opera, choral and orchestral pieces, site-specific theatre events and film.
Susan Elizabeth "Suzi" Digby, Lady Eatwell OBE is a British choral conductor and music educator.
Robin Blaze is an English countertenor.
The St Mark Passion, BWV 247, is a lost Passion setting by Johann Sebastian Bach, first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday, 23 March 1731 and again, in a revised version, in 1744. Though Bach's music is lost, the libretto by Picander is still extant, and from this, the work can to some degree be reconstructed.
Denis Griffiths (1922–2001), Welsh lyric tenor who regularly performed on BBC radio from the late 1940s onwards and who later featured among the soloists in the Independent Television series Gwlad y Gan which - as Land of Song - was networked to a wide audience throughout the country between 1958 and 1964. The musical show was made by TWW in Cardiff’s Pontcanna studios, and was designed to celebrate Wales within Wales and beyond.
James Gilchrist is a British tenor specialising in recital and oratorio singing.
Ruth Holton is an English soprano singer.
Klaus Mertens is a German bass and bass-baritone singer who is known especially for his interpretation of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach for bass voice.
Caroline Stam is a Dutch classical soprano who has an international (European) performing career specializing in baroque repertoire, reinforced by a distinguished presence in modern recordings.
John Butt is an English orchestral and choral conductor, organist, harpsichordist and scholar. He holds the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow and is music director of the Dunedin Consort with whom he has made award-winning recordings in historically informed performance. Many of them feature reconstructions of a specific historical performance, such as Bach's first Christmas services on Christmas Day in Leipzig.
Bath Bach Choir, formerly The City of Bath Bach Choir (CBBC), is based in Bath, Somerset, England, and is a registered charity. Founded in 1946 by Cuthbert Bates, who also became a founding father of the Bath Bach Festival in 1950, the choir's original aim was to promote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach via periodic music festivals. Bates – an amateur musician with a great love and understanding of this composer's works – was also the CBBC's principal conductor and continued in this role until his sudden death, in April 1980. This untimely exit pre-empted his planned retirement concert performance of J. S Bach's Mass in B minor, scheduled for July of the same year, and effectively ended the first period of the choir's history.
L'arpa festante is a German chamber orchestra, specializing in the revival and performance of unknown works, especially from the Baroque era. It was established in Munich in 1983 by Michi Gaigg, who also led the ensemble as concertmaster until 1995. The ensemble takes its name from Giovanni Battista Maccioni's dramatic cantata L'arpa festante which was first performed in 1653, inaugurating what was to become the Bavarian State Opera.
Andrew Wilson-Dickson is a British composer, pianist and an authority on early music practice.
References
- ↑ "Companies House".Welsh Camerata
- ↑ Power, Steph (4 December 2014). "Welsh Camerata: Karuṇā – An oratorio by Andrew Wilson-Dickson". Wales Arts Review .
- ↑ "Review".Classical-music.com J S Bach's St Mark Passion
- ↑ "All Things Considered".BBC Radio Wales - Music for the Passion of Christ
- ↑ "BBC Morning Service".