Oslo International Church Music Festival is a place for sacred moments and great music experiences. It is held for 10 days each March in the churches of Norway's capital city, with Oslo Cathedral as the main venue.
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For this year we can recommend world premiere: Ernst Wilhelm Wolf's Passion Oratorio Jesu, Deine Passion Will Ich Jetzt Bedenken (Jesus, On Thy Dying Love) on March 25.
Of the many Passion works of music history, few are better known or performed more often than J. S. Bach's Matthew Passion and St. John Passion. Both works are exceptional in their length and ambition.
During the second half of the 18th century, a number of Passions were written that do not follow the gospels page for page, but instead choose specific scenes.
This is the case with Ernst Wilhelm Wolf's (1735–1792) Passion oratorio Jesu, deine Passion will ich jetzt bedenken (Jesus, On Thy Dying Love), composed in 1756.
The work is influenced by the ideas and philosophy of the Enlightenment, and uses Rococo's tonal language.
Wolf was a very well-regarded and well-known composer in his day who lived a large part of his life in Weimar, a powerhouse in German spiritual life, and was a good friend of, among others, author and poet Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Musically he was inspired by his teacher and friend Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
The German early music ensemble Die Kölner Akademie under the direction of conductor Michael Alexander Willens performs Wolf's Passion oratorio in concert. The oratorio has never been performed in concert, only recorded on CD and thus has its world premiere at the festival.
The work was written before Wolf became a well-known composer, and was not published in his lifetime.
The audience has a unique opportunity to discover this beautiful Passion oratorio by an exciting composer while experiencing a neglected musical genre, the German oratorio from the period between J. S. Bach and J. Haydn.
Die Kölner Akademie is a critically acclaimed German early music ensemble under the artistic direction of American conductor Michael Alexander Willens.
When: Monday 25 March, 19:00
Where: Oslo Cathedral ■