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Freiburg in winter. Accompanied by the sound of Johann Sebastian Bach’s concerto in D major, BWV972, the camera slowly glides over the snow-covered forests and roof tops of the half-timbered houses towards the Centre of the town, to the Freiburg Minster.
The Minster is said to have the most beautiful spire in Christendom and is probably the oldest in Germany, having been completed during the Middle Ages and not added on during the 19th century as were the spires of the cathedrals in Ulm and Cologne. A magnificent setting, therefore, for a baroque Christmas concert.
The town’s Baroque Orchestra, now one of the best-known of its kind well beyond the country’s borders, welcomed that evening the American soprano Barbara Bonney, the baritone Matthias Goerne and the brass ensemble ‘German Brass’.
The aria Wachet auf Ihr Adern und Ihr Glieder was an appropriate beginning to the concert; carried along by the brilliant sound of the trumpets, Matthias Goerne gave a joyful interpretation of this bass aria from Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Unser Mund sei voll dess Lächelns, BWV110, which the composer wrote for Christmas Day 1725.
