Utwory na płycie:

• Vorspiel
• Die Ankündigung des Engels
• Maria Lobgesang
• Zwischenspiel
• Die Geburt Jesu
• Die Verkündigung des Engels an die Hirten
• Einleitung
• Maria an der Krippe
• Die Hirten bei der Krippe
• Die drei Könige aus dem Morgenlande
• Schluss-Scene

Ein Weihnachtsmysterium
nach Worten der Bibel und Spielen des Volkes, Op. 31

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 the "Weihnachtsmysterium" (Christmas Mystery), 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 colourful orchestral treatment and are reminiscent of Wagner's operas or Liszt's symphonic poems, in places also of Brahms, Humperdinck or Reger.

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Live recording: 30 November and 1 December 2019 at Marktkirche St. Nicolai, Hameln (Germany).