Martin Petzold & Martin Hoepfner: Christmas at home

The wonderful thing about Christmas songs is that they can develop their phenomenal effect even within quiet, reflective, and intimate surroundings: they are able to move their listeners, to capture them, and to transport them to their very own ideal of Christmas without loud, noisy orchestral accompaniment. Tenor Martin Petzold and guitarist Martin Hoepfner have selected their personal favourites from the vast repertoire of German Christmas and Advent songs, and have arranged them to suit their ideals. Along with Alice Ungerer (soprano) and Jakob Grabenhorst (boy soprano), they sing and play traditional melodies such as ‘Es kommt ein Schiff geladen’, ‘Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier’, and ‘Wie soll ich dich empfangen’, as well as new works such as ‘Simeon’—a piece composed by Georg Christoph Biller, cantor at St Thomas Leipzig. With large helpings of nuance and a beautiful feel for detail, this CD makes even the best-known of all Christmas and Advent songs sound so new and unblemished that listeners will be able to find elements familiar as well as new in them—regardless of their personal ideal of Christmas. ...and to help the listener feeling warm all over, every CD case contains a yellow Christmas Candle!

Martin Petzold
Martin Hoepfner
Alice Ungerer