The MBC Weihnachtslieder concert

Our Munich Bach Choir had a "Lessons and Carols" concert on Wednesday evening, in a beautiful old cathedral (St. Michael's church) right in the center of town.  It felt truly festive to be part of this traditional service in an historic Baroque-era church, with a three-story gilded altar and a mighty organ.

I had my camera during the rehearsal, but the church was quite dark in the evening (and cold) so check the link above to see better pictures.  Of course I couldn't take pictures during the concert, but the place was filled, with over 400 people.  Münchners really come out to concerts!

The organist sits in the brightly lit area under many of the ornate organ pipes.

 The acoustics in here were quite something: sound soup when the place was empty -- you could sing a chord with yourself, the reverberation time was so long (at least 5 seconds I estimated).   But during the concert, with all the people absorbing the sound (literally and figuratively) we sounded wonderful, especially the a capella pieces.  When we sang with the organ, the sound was... majestic, but I'd be impressed if people could make out many of our words, as carefully as we were e-nun-ci-at-ing.

We stood up front on these stairs for the (whole hour and a half) concert.

The lessons were read by an elderly blind man (reading from a Braille Bible) who has performed/read with the MBC choir for many years now.  He has a deep, rich voice, and his reading has a very natural and sincere feeling.  Some members of of the choir claim they have a new understanding of some of these well-known biblical passages, simply from listening to him read, and that even seemed true for me:  He spoke slowly enough (and I know the texts well enough) for me to easily understand the German, and even though I've long since taken the story as fiction, it felt very meaningful to me, somehow.  Maybe just because it was a very "Christmas-y" experience, singing beautiful European carols (German and a few English) in a magnificent European cathedral.

Our reader did not sit in here, but this gilded pulpit
was in my line of sight during the concert
so I gazed at it during much of the reading.

My favorite part of Christmas has always been singing carols, either at home with friends or in church, so this service was a high point in the holidays.  And it was nice to go have a Weissbier with the choir afterwards too!