The Offenbach Christmas concert

It was the only time that you, our audience, could experience the Capitol Christmas Lounge with a cup of mulled wine and a bowl of gingerbread and cookies in front of you. It was also one of the most beautiful Christmas programs we have ever developed for you. And one in which we (as always) certainly gave our all to make your musical Christmas as wonderful as possible. Because it was the only Christmas concert where we weren't in the same room as you: COVID Christmas 2020, exactly five years ago. Thanks to Kulturfonds FrankfurtRheinMain and Sparkasse Offenbach, we were able to record the concert and then broadcast it to you at home a weekend later.

The concert was accessed and viewed by several thousand devices, from Scandinavia, Italy, the USA and many other places. The only catch: you and we were not together and we were all worried about each other.

Five years later, we are finally presenting this special program live. Our arrangers have written wonderful arrangements of traditional Advent and Christmas carols: from "Leise rieselt der Schnee" to "Macht hoch die Tür", from "Kommet ihr Hirten" to "Alle Jahre wieder". Something very special is Rolf Rudin's almost transcendental meditation on "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen".

Together with some of the most popular orchestral Christmas music - to "Hansel and Gretel", "The Nutcracker" or the Christmas carols by Peter Cornelius - there is also something very Offenbachian: "The Story of the Christmas Star" by Offenbach lettering artist Rudolf Koch from 1919. Patrik Bishay has turned it into an atmospheric radio play that forms a warm-hearted synthesis with the loving text, including a projection of the original woodcuts.

Engelbert Humperdinck
OVERTURE TO 'HÄNSEL AND GRETEL'

Peter Cornelius/Marco Jovic
CHRISTMAS SONGS OP.8

Georg Weißel / Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez
OPEN WIDE THE DOOR

Rolf Rudin
ROSA MYSTICA, OP.98

Trad. / Frank Heckel
COME YE SHEPHERDS

Friedrich Silcher / Grimminger & Hagedorn
EVERY YEAR AGAIN

Rudolf Koch / Patrik Bishay
THE STORY OF THE CHRISTMAS STAR

Alexander Friedrich von Hessen-Rumpenheim
CHRISTMAS LEGEND

Wilhelm Kienzl
FINAL VOICE

Trad. / Frank Heckel
SÜSSER DIE GLOCKEN NIE KLINGEN

Trad. / Ralph Philipp Ziegler
THE SNOW TRICKLES SOFTLY

Trad. / Marco Jovic
BORN IN BETLEHEM

Peter I. Tchaikovsky
THE NUTCRACKER, OP.71
[Excerpt]

Speakers
Hans Christoph Begemann, baritone
CAPITOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Conductor: David Preil