Bach: Christmas Oratorio - Dresden Chamber Choir/Leipzig Gewandhaus O/Chailly - review

Since he took over the Gewandhaus orchestra five years ago, Riccardo Chailly has been including the music that is closely associated with Leipzig in his programmes, not just Mendelssohn and Schumann, but JS Bach too. His latter-day transformation into a Bach conductor continues with this account of the six cantatas that make up the Christmas Oratorio, taken from concerts in the Gewandhaus in January this year. Unlike Chailly's recording of the St Matthew Passion, which appeared last spring, this does not feature the choir of the Thomaskirche, where Bach was Cantor for the last 27 years of his life and where the Christmas Oratorio was first performed in 1734, but uses the Dresden Chamber Choir, with sopranos rather than trebles. With excellent soloists, led by Martin Lattke as the Evangelist, the result is a wonderfully flexible and dramatically vivid account, constantly illuminated by the obbligatos from the Gewandhaus wind, particularly the outstanding principal trumpet. Chailly manages to combine the rhythmic lightness of a period-instrument performance with the tonal richness of a traditional orchestra. It is by far the most successful of his Bach forays to date.