The opening chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio represents High Baroque splendour at its most electrifying. On Sunday night, it was a spectacular launch for Bach Musica NZ’s final 2023 concert, offering the first three parts of this Yuletide masterpiece.
A spirit of celebration filled the hall, a fitting tribute to the dynamic Rita Paczian who, for decades, with her loyal and well-disciplined musicians, has provided the city with an astonishing range of choral music, featuring some of the very best local singers as soloists.
Inevitably it was her 45 choristers who first caught the ear on this occasion, returning after interval to thrill us again, replacing uninhibited shouts of joy with scurrying contrapuntal pleas. Throughout the evening, their succession of chorales, each deftly individualised by Paczian and some with telling instrumental traceries, intensified the momentum to this Christmas narrative.
Iain Tetley, as Evangelist, was the storyteller par excellence, guiding us on Bach’s journey in buoyant, shapely recitative and breaking into glorious song for his aria Frohe Hirten, graced by Catherine Bowie’s lithe and finely articulated flute obbligato.
