Two world-renowned singing stars are this edition’s guests at the “Festive Advent Concert”, German TV’s most successful concert series: soprano Diana Damrau and tenor Mauro Peter. The young French conductor Marie Jacquot leads the Staatskapelle Dresden for the first time. With the 2024/25 season, Marie Jacquot will take over as Musical Director of the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. In addition to the Staatskapelle Dresden, two choirs complete the cast of the 2022 “Advent Concert”: the Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden and the Kammerchor der Frauenkirche. The choir’s director, the cantor of the Dresden Frauenkirche, Matthias Grünert, also appears as organist. “The Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the Sächsischer Staatsoperchor once again proved their quality.“ (Online Merker)
Blomstedt conducts Bach’s Mass in B Minor
Just a few weeks before his 90th birthday, Herbert Blomstedt gifted himself a special birthday present: conducting Bach’s Mass in B Minor, in the Leipzig Thomaskirche – the composer’s former workplace. According to Blomstedt, Bach’s last complete vocal work is the climax of his creativity and is one of the most important works in his life: “It is like a reflection of doubt. It is enormously powerful music in the same way that a wedge is enormously powerful.” For Peter Wollny, director of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Bach’s magnum opus is “without doubt the most intellectually and musically varied and challenging of Bach’s compositions” and “one of the greatest achievements of Western culture.” The concert closed the Bachfest Leipzig 2017 and was performed by the Gewandhausorchester, the Dresdner Kammerchor, and the soloists Christina Landshamer, Elisabeth Kulman, Wolfram Lattke and Luca Pisaroni.