Hector Berlioz »L’enfance du Christ« op. 25

Berlioz’s Christmas Story with a Hidden Twist

Hector Berlioz’s »L’enfance du Christ,« a popular choice for the Christmas season, stands out for its transparent and elegant musical language – so simple it took even Berlioz’s harshest Parisian critics by surprise. Yet to describe the work’s own genesis as »transparent« would be about as far from the truth as you could get. When Berlioz first premiered the central »L’adieu des bergers« chorus from Part Two – the seed from which the entire oratorio grew – he couldn’t resist a mischievous jape at the expense of the Parisian music world. He, a vocal sceptic of early church music enthusiasts, passed the piece off as the work of an invented seventeenth-century composer. The critics promptly showered him with lavish praise. Only two years later did Berlioz reveal the ruse, subsequently expanding the piece into a full-scale oratorio recounting three pivotal moments from the childhood of Christ.

»L’enfance du Christ« at the Philharmonie Berlin

In this pre-Christmas concert, the Rundfunkchor Berlin joins the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Maxime Pascal to bring this work – quite definitely from the pen of Hector Berlioz – to the stage of the Berlin Philharmonie.