Anniversary of the Palestrina Motet Choir: Impressive concert experience

Created: 04/12/2022, 07:02

The singers of the Palestrina Motet Choir as well as musicians and soloists impressed on Sunday evening in the series "St.

Filling Joseph with life" with Bach's St. John Passion.

© Thomas Plettenberg

The Palestrina Motettenchor Tegernsee impressed the audience on Sunday in Holzkirchen with an impressive performance of Bach's St. John Passion - a successful start to the anniversary year.

Holzkirchen

– How quiet can a whole church full of people be?

Impressively quiet.

Instead of grateful applause, the Palestrina Motettenchor Tegernsee had wished for a minute's silence on Sunday evening as a sign of recognition after Johann Sebastian Bach's St. John Passion.

An impressive conclusion after a special concert experience at the beginning of Holy Week, with which the series “St.

Filling Joseph with life” once again offered a special experience after the many adversities of the past two years.

With the St. John Passion BWV 245, the choir, which was founded in Tegernsee in 1972 under the direction of Sebastian Schober, has given itself a gift that is well worth hearing on its 50th anniversary.

Musically supported by the Tegernsee Chamber Orchestra under concert master Michael Friedrich, Markus Stern on the organ and Maria Friedrich on the cello, the choir and the soloists Roswitha Schmelzl (soprano), Stephanie Hampl (alto), Yo Chan Ahn (evangelist), Eric Price (tenor ) and Thomas Hamberger (bass) the Gospel account of the suffering and death of Christ.

Sung dialogues, instrumental passages, choral singing that sounds as precise as it is light, and top-class solos flowed so elegantly into one another that they carried the listeners effortlessly through the evening to the "Miracle of Easter", in which at the end "there is a king,

The always wonderful interior of St. Josef, in front of whose bright walls the red jackets of the choir singers shone, provided a protective framework for, in times of pandemics and the Ukraine war, to also postulate the choir's abiding by the law on the death of Jesus and the crucifixion of Christ in blood-splattering detail to be able to endure.

In the corner of my eye, the Lenten veil hanging on the wall based on the X-ray of a foot that broke in Chile during the dictatorship, from which grow golden blossoms of hope - just like the song that goes from a lively "Lord our ruler" to the redeemed " Rest well, you holy bones” spans a top-class musical arc.

Choir director Sebastian Schober conducted the participants.

© Thomas Plettenberg

Silence shows fascinated attention

The quiet conclusion in St. Josef was followed by an extremely eloquent conclusion to the concert in the anteroom and on the forecourt.

After so many months of culture, which was largely experienced alone, there was a need to talk about what had been heard together.

This went from the special spatial experience in the Holzkirchner church to the musical performance and the history of the choir, in which some members from the founding days still sing to this day, to the minute's silence, with which not all visitors were happy.

Some regretted whether the choir, soloists and instrumentalists were deprived of their more than deserved wages through applause.

Probably unfounded, because the appreciation of the audience arrived even without clapping.

Even more,

when it was as quiet as a mouse in the fully occupied church for more than two hours and testified to the spellbound attention of the visitors.

A more than successful start to the concerts in the anniversary year of the Palestrina Motettenchor Tegernsee.