It has become a good tradition for the past couple of years that NOVAT prepares a special music project for Christmas. Christmas Oratorio by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev was performed for the first time on the main stage of NOVAT on 8th January 2018.
Metropolitan Tikhon of Novosibirsk and Berdsk greeted all the audience before the start and congratulated on the Christmas holiday: “Today we have an opportunity to perceive the meaning of Christmas through music and chanting, to understand what massage is spread to the world by this feast day. Every day we all have to make a choice, and that’s why it’s so valuable – personal freedom of choice. What is especially important for us is to define the mission and the meaning of life, and the Christian community proposes Our Lord Jesus Christ as the answer. Christian volumes describe thoroughly his life, his lessons, his calls; those who accepted Christ as their leader, God and chief made the right choice. Sacred chants tell that the light of reason broke into the world, and today within Christmas we learn worshipping the Shine of Truth, which means there is nothing more sublime than His personality and the Lord speaketh thou of Himself that He is the Light, the Way and the Truth. I wish we all could find this path in life”.
Bishop Hilarion’s work was performed on the stage of NOVAT by the symphonic orchestra of the theatre under the baton of Eugene Volynsky, featuring the soloists: Nadezhda Nesterova, Nikolay Loskutkin, Andrey Isakov, the choir and the children’s choir. The plot of the oratorio describes Heaven and Earth, angels and humans unite for praising the Nativity, which is reflected in the interaction of children’s choir against adult’s one, while the kids’ voices represent angels and adults represent humans. Margarita Mezentseva, children’s choir master: “Participation of children’s voices is very important for the Christmas Oratorio, since the kids’ voices are as clean as their souls. Musically, this piece is pretty hard to master, one can find shadows of Bach, Handel, Vavaldi in it, and our choir didn’t have that much time for practice. To tell you the truth, at first children were a bit frightened by the amount of text, and moreover, a text of an orthodox sacred service. But later they got excited, because they love a challenge. In my opinion they did well”.
Christmas Oratorio for soloists, choir and symphonic orchestra premiered in 2007 at the Washington national cathedral (USA). The audience amounted to five thousand people. In Russia the Oratorio premiered on 7th January 2008 on the main stage of the Moscow Conservatory. Created by an orthodox composer and churchman, this piece converts sacred texts of the Orthodox Church into music, highlighting three greatest Christian holidays: Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Nativity of Christ and the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.
Images provided by the Novosibirsk eparchy’s media center at nskmi.ru
