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This Chanukiah – Daniel Cainer Click here to watch It’s Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. For those of you who might not be familiar with this festival, this week is when we memorialize a dark time in Jewish history when the Second Temple in Jerusalem was looted and Judaism was outlawed. This all happened a long time ago, in 167 BCE. But, as usual with Jewish people, that’s not the end of the story. We are told that when the Temple was liberated the liberators, known as the Hasmoneans, found only enough oil to light the Temple for one day. This single cruse of oil lasted instead for 8 days and nights and we light a candle every night for 8 nights during Chanukah to celebrate this event. These days are called Chanukah, days of rejoicing, when it is forbidden to lament or to fast. Often the candles are lit in a 9-branch candelabra, known as a Menorah or Chanukiah, with one higher branch for that candle to light the others. Most Jewish homes have a Chanukiah, often passed down through many generations to symbolise this continuing family and community celebration but it means just as much to share the candle lighting with family and friends, no matter what the vessel. My friend, the singer/songwriter Daniel Cainer, wrote this lovely song which would be beautiful at any Chanukah candle-lighting but is especially resonant this year when there is again darkness threatening and we are particularly in need of the benefice of light. The video is by another great singer/songwriter Christine Lavin. Bach Cantatas – Magnificat – Solomon’s Knot Click here to watch Here’s a wonderfully Christmassy concert to set your holiday season alight. Solomon’s Knot, a huge and accomplished vocal and instrumental collective, perform two of Bach’s Cantatas and his Magnificat, all first performed exactly 300 years ago, at Christmas 1723. At that time, Johan Sebastian Bach was the Thomaskantor, or Director of Church Music, of St. Thomas’ Church in Leipzig. He composed a staggering amount of music for St.Thomas’ and four other associated churches during his tenure in Leipzig, including more than 300 cantatas, a new one for each Sunday, collected in annual cycles, and additional music for all church-related events throughout the year. He was also required to teach singing and Latin to the students of St Thomas’ School, although he dodged the Latin chore by using senior students as deputies. For these cantatas and other large-scale works, Bach drew the soprano and alto choristers from the school and the tenors and basses from elsewhere in Leipzig. Performing at weddings and funerals provided extra income. Despite a stormy relationship with his bosses, he remained in his Leipzig post until his death in 1740, although not without his many enemies trying to unseat him. The vocal and instrumental collective Solomon’s Knot was founded in London in 2008 with a mission to communicate the full power of 17th- and 18th-century music as directly as possible. What began a decade ago as a promise never to lose the joy of performing, to blow the dust off early music and break down the barriers of classical music has evolved into Solomon’s Knot’s reputation today: direct communication, adventurous programming and bold trademark performances, now allied with, and performing regularly at London’s Wigmore Hall. Notably, this huge group, (24 performers crammed onto Wigmore Hall’s less than capacious stage), performs without a conductor, the singers by heart. Music by JS Bach currently forms a major focus of the ensemble’s activities, performed without scores or a conductor. Here two cantatas and the composer’s early version (including various Christmas interpolations) of the Magnificat are selected, all dating from the year 1723. O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort BWV60 Wachet! betet! betet! wachet! BWV70 Magnificat in E flat BWV243a with Christmas interpolations The video will be available on demand for 90 days after the date of the broadcast which was Dec 7. Constable’s The Hay Wain – National Gallery Click here to watch This new film is part of the National Gallery's new exclusive 'National Treasures' film series. A key strand of the National Gallery's Bicentenary celebrations, this is one of 12 loaned paintings from the Gallery's collection across partner venues throughout the UK, providing expert commentary on these iconic masterpieces. The Hay Wain (1821) by John Constable will be familiar to many as capturing quintessential English life in the Suffolk countryside. But does this familiarity stop us from seeing how radical this landscape picture was at the time? Curator Mary McMahon shows us the artistic innovations he made. The traditional, academic hierarchy of artistic genres still held weight in Constable’s time, which did not favour landscape painters. However, Thomas Gainsborough had paved the way in the previous generation of painters to pursue landscapes. Constable painted Flatford Mill, which his family had leased for nearly a century, from his London studio, working from sketches and studies. The building survives and is today known as Willy Lott’s Cottage. His brushwork was loose and broad for the time, and he drew directly from nature for his bright colour palette. This distinguished him from the works of Old Masters. The Magic Flute – Met Opera On Demand Click here to subscribe or rent For those of you who heeded my advice to subscribe to the Metropolitan Opera’s On Demand series, Mozart’s The Magic Flute is the opera that may best suit the season and cheer us all up as we head into the holidays. This was the groundbreaking broadcast that started it all. It launched the Met’s heralded Live in HD series, seen by opera lovers in movie theaters around the world and now On Demand in our own homes on our own screens. Adults and children alike have been enchanted all over again by the whimsical humor and breathtaking puppetry of Julie Taymor’s hit 2006 production, presented in a shortened English-language version, and a recent second look confirmed its startling visual impact. Conducted by the late James Levine, a winning ensemble cast – including Nathan Gunn, Ying Huang, Matthew Polenzani, Erika Miklosa, and René Pape – brings fresh life to Mozart's timeless fairy tale. If you’d rather not subscribe but want to see this special production anyway, you can rent it for $4.99 which is a bargain.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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