Distler: Choralpassion

The Württemberg Chamber Choir is starting a very special year in 2025 with a Passion program: after 55 years of working together, Dieter Kurz will be handing over the direction of the choir. Until his departure, however, he would like to perform a few more concerts with the Württemberg Chamber Choir and work on Hugo Distler's "Choral Passion". This liturgical setting of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ for mixed choir and soloists is purely a cappella. Influenced by early baroque works, Distler created a haunting, dramatic composition in 1932. Melodies from well-known Passion songs, some of them pre-Reformation, such as "Jesu, deine Passion" or "Christus, der uns selig macht" are sometimes set in a highly polyphonic style, but always with a word-based melody. The scenes of Jesus' suffering and death are interspersed with musical accounts by the evangelist, the text of which is selected from all four Gospels.

Martin Höhler as the narrator and Volker Spiegel in the role of Jesus enrich the five-part interpretation of Distler's Choral Passion by the Württemberg Chamber Choir. The piece is framed by settings of the Bible text "Das ist je gewißlich wahr" by Hugo Distler and Heinrich Schütz.

Copyright: Sabine Haymann