In Norway, people need a lot of music and singing to counteract the darkness and cold in December.

The Christmas concerts of the Norwegian Soloist Choir with their

Julemelodier

, improvisations and "walking tunes" — entrance and exit songs — are so popular that after the first CD "Rós - Songs of Christmas" a second CD entitled "Veni" has now been released (BIS, Klassik Center Kassel).

The Norske Solistkor is not just any choir.

The ensemble of 26 singers under the direction of Grete Pedersen has an excellent international reputation;

the choral sound is full and at the same time clear and flexible.

Artistry comes together with a laid-back delight in traditional songwriting.

The Norwegian version of "O come, all ye faithful" begins with a gentle unison and then unfolds into a polyphonic, rich choral sound that fills the church.

The lullaby "En krybbe var vuggen" (with the melody of "Away in a Manger") also begins secretly tenderly,

It's about "det lille barn Jesus", the little Jesus child lying there on the straw.

In a surprising turn from crib to cross, the soloist chorus sings the third verse in a serious, even fervent, tone.

Gjermund Larsen's violin playing is of almost magical simplicity.

As a noble accompaniment, he connects the verses of the song, but also plays purely instrumental pieces, as if it were by the fireplace, together with Marco Ambrosini on the nyckelharpa.

The medieval stringed instrument with the pithy drone sound of the sympathetic strings is used today primarily in Celtic and Swedish folk music.

That we arrive at paradise as singing pilgrims is the idea in "Pilgrimssang" or "Deeilig er jorden" (Delicious is the earth);

the soulful song should not be missing from any Norwegian Christmas celebration.

It is the high art of not letting something well-known sound stale, but filled like a great gift.

Inspired by the warming voices of Norske Solistkors, paradise could be a realistic prospect.

A sheep, shorn, out of focus, in the fog, looks at us with attentive ears on the cover of the double CD "Pastorale".

It is shepherds, pastori, to whom the angel of the Lord proclaims the message of peace in the birth, and from ancient times shepherds play flute-like instruments in artistic reception.

The virtuoso recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger has put together a geographically defined album with Italian music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (dhm/Sony), in which she discovers many new things with the Ensemble 1700 and at the same time a reunion with Handel's Organ Concerto in F major (the solo part for flute) or with Vivaldi's Concerto for flautino, "Der Winter".

The pastorale gets a rustic note from the group "Li Piffari e le Muse" with the instruments fiddle, shawm, bagpipes.

The shepherds and the animals smell of stables, and the Star of Bethlehem shines through the roof because, as Bertolt Brecht found out, there is a hole in it.

The distinctive program is deepened by short readings: Matthias Brandt reads from the enchanting "Italian Picture Book" by Fanny Lewald (1847) about an Italian Christmas night.

Turi Vasile's poignant, yet completely unsentimental story, "Die Schalmei des Delfo", a reminder of Sicilian conditions in the 1930s, lingers on for a long time.

The conductor John Eliot Gardiner performed all six Christmas cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach with the English Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists in the Weimar Herderkirche in 1999 as part of his project "Bach Cantata Pilgrimage".

The memorable concerts were documented on film by BBC Wales;

now the film has been reissued (EuroArts).

The country-herdsman-like tone is always physically concrete in Gardiner and the orchestra with the softly contoured tone of oboes, bassoons and transverse flutes.

The famous choir sometimes sings splendidly (“Glory be to God sung”), sometimes heartily (“How should I receive you”), and always fluently and presently.

To the lullaby of Mary, the wondrous altar aria "Sleep, my love, enjoy the peace," the camera gaze wanders to a painting of the Holy Family with animals in the stable.

He also deliberately lingers on the closed eyes of the dead tired Josef — this is a new look at the father, who is sorely challenged by the events, and who could also be meant by “dearest”.