Hanover Band

Bach: Christmas Oratorio

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach Christmas Oratorio
The Hanover Band and Chorus, Andrew Arthur
Philippa Hyde, Tim Morgan, Bradley Smith, Edward Grint
Kings Place, 22 December 2025

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248) is a collection of six cantatas performed in Leipzig on six separate occasions over the 1734 Christmas period. Each cantata was performed twice, in the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche. They were performed on December 25th, 26th, and 27th, New Year’s Day, the first Sunday in the New Year, and finally Epiphany (6 January), covering the complete Lutheran Christmas season. Despite the separate nature of the performance schedule, it seems clear from the autograph title page that Bach saw the six cantatas as a unified whole. There is a logical sequence of keys, moving from D major, G, D, F, A and back to D, and the first and last cantatas are connected by Bach reuse of the chorale melody of Part I’s Wie soll ich dich empfangen for the last chorus of Part VI, Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen. That choral melody is the same as the Passion Choral in the St Matthew Passion. The different instrumentation would have made it difficult for Bach to have performed them all as a continuous whole, as is usually done nowadays in concert performances. On this occasion, as is usually the case, the 4th cantata, for New Year’s Day (the circumcision and naming of Jesus), was omitted.

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Hanover Band: Beethoven 9

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Beethoven Ninth Symphony
Beethoven 250: online festival of Beethoven Symphonies and Chamber Music
The Hanover Band, Sir Mark Elder
Recorded at London’s Mansion House
First broadcast 16 December 2020 

The conclusion of The Hanover Band’s Beethoven 250 project (previously reviewed here) came with the release of the Ninth Symphony on 16 December (the assumed date of Beethoven’s birth). Unlike the previous eight symphonies, which were recorded in Stationers’ Hall, this recording with its much larger orchestra took place in the curiously named Egyptian Hall of London’s Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. All nine symphonies were recorded one after the other during August, with the Hanover Band’s associate director Benjamin Bayl as conductor for the previous 8 symphonies. He was prevented by Covid-19 regulations from travelling to the recording sessions for the Ninth Symphony, Sir Mark Elder stepped in to conduct. The recordings from the whole project can be accessed here, and Beethoven’s Ninth on the Hanover Band website here or on their YouTube channel, with programme notes, here.

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Beethoven 250: Hanover Band

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Beethoven 250
An online festival of Beethoven Symphonies and Chamber Music
The Hanover Band, Consone Quartet, Benjamin Bayl
Recorded at the Stationers’ Hall in The City of London
& Arundel Town Hall, West Sussex
Wednesday broadcasts, September to December 2020 

One of the most enterprising and musically successful of this year’s online Covid concert series is the Beethoven 250 programme of concerts from The Hanover Band (who are also celebrated their own 40th anniversary this year) and the Consone Quartet, all playing appropriate period instruments. The series started with four concerts of chamber music, followed by the complete symphonies. The symphonies were recorded in London’s musically significent 1673 Stationers’ Hall while the chamber concerts were recorded in the Town Hall in Arundal, The Hanover Band’s home town. The venues were chosen to be similar to the size and acoustic of the venues where the original performances might have been first experienced. The homepage for the Beethoven 250 festival is here, with links to the brochure for the festival and all the broadcasts. The concerts can also be viewed on The Hanover Band’s homepage or their YouTube channel. Although the concerts can, commendably, all be viewed for free, donations are obviously not only welcome but, in these straightened times for musicians, are pretty well essential.

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Handel: Theodora

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Handel: Theodora
Basingstoke Choral Society, Hanover Band, Erica Eloff
The Anvil, Basingstoke. 2 July 2016

Local choral societies do not normally come within my reviewing remit, but the addition of the period instrument orchestra, The Hanover Band and the outstanding soprano Erica Eloff to the event at my local concert hall proved irresistible. The Basingstoke Choral Society has local roots going back to the late 19th century. An 1889 programme of a performance of Elijah by its predecessor, the Basingstoke Musical Society, mentions a choir of around 100 singers. For this performance of Handel’s oratorio Theodora, they fielded 108 singers, with 38 sopranos, 38 altos, 13 tenors and 18 bass singers, arranged in six rows overflowing from the stage on the rear stalls seats.

Theordora is a curious work. One of Handel’s least successful productions, it only ran for three poorly attended performances, and was only revived once during Handel’s lifetime. It was one of his last oratorios, written when Handel was 64, and is now seen as a masterpiece, with some notably arias and choruses. The story is unusual when compared with other Handel oratorios and operas. It is based on the story of a fourth century Princess who refused to Continue reading →