Sounds Like ChristmasAngelika Kirchschlager - soprano
Ensemble Amarcord
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
dir: Gottfried van der Goltz
Label: EuroArts
released October 2004
Running time: 82'
This Christmas DVD presents the soprano Angelika Kirchschlager. Recorded live in the picturesque gothic Cistercian monastery of Schulpforta in Saxony-Anhalt, the concert footage is combined with charming motifs of snowy mountain landscapes and cities decorated for Christmas. Favourite Christmas compositions from the classical repertoire are combined with popular carols – and it all sounds like Christmas! Angelika Kirchschlager currently ranks among the most sought-after sopranos worldwide for both opera and concert-hall performance She is accompanied by the outstanding Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. The Leipzig a-cappella ensemble Amarcord, former members of St. Thomas’s Boys Choir, sing popular Christmas tunes.
Pforta, or Schulpforta, is a former Cistercian monastery, Pforta Abbey (1137-1540), near Naumburg on the Saale River in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is now a celebrated German public boarding school, called Landesschule Pforta. The remains of the monastery include the 13th century gothic church; it is a cross-vaulted, colonnaded basilica with an extraordinarily long nave, a peculiar western façade, and a late Romanesque double-naved cloister. What remains of the original building (1137–40) is in the Romanesque style, while the restoration (1251–1268) belongs to the early Gothic. Other buildings are now used as dormitories and lecture halls. There is also the Fürstenhaus (Prince's house), built in 1573. Schulpforta was one of the three Fürstenschulen (Prince's schools) founded in 1543 by Maurice, Elector of Saxony (at that time Duke). Notable former pupils include Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, August Ferdinand Möbius, and, from 1858 to 1864, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche!
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