Merry Christmas from Lübeck (and Flensburg!)

Early music is my great passion, but sometimes, for a radio host, it presents a challenge. For example, one of the things people love about Christmas is the music, and what's a big factor in that love? Familiarity. A lot of Christmas music from the middle ages and renaissance, though gorgeous and moving, just doesn't make people say, 'Ah, now that I've heard that, it's really Christmas!'. 

Of course, there are exceptions, like Lo, how a rose, Riu, Riu Chiu, and Ding dong merrily on high, which began life as a Renaissance dance! 

That's why I was so happy to find Praetorius' Mass for Christmas Morning, performed by the Gabrieli Consort and Players. It has everything: solemnity, jubilation, lots of dance-like bits, solo organ works, multi-choral writing, sackbuts, and above all, familiar tunes like 'How brightly shines the morning star' and 'In dulci jubilo'. That piece has been a fixture on the Ancient Voices Christmas show for years, combined with gorgeous but lesser-known Christmas gifts from the past. 

A couple of weeks ago, I got to hear it live in Flensburg, a town on an inlet of the Baltic Sea, quite near the Danish border. How near, you ask?

About five miles!

We took the train up there, and had a fun day out. It was brisk and windy, but we had wrapped up well, and didn't feel it too badly.

Before Praetorius, there was lunch!

Being vegetarians, Stretch and I are excluded from one of Germany's finest culinary traditions: Curry-wurst: sausages smothered in a spicy curry sauce, served with fries. But I found a restaurant which served a vegetarian variant, and we both discovered what the fuss was all about. Yum!

Yay, now we are really German!

Of course, you have to have beer with Curry-Wurst. I had the local brew, Flensburger, and Jim had Schneider-Weisse, because Schneider. ;-)

Then we had a nice walk by the harbor:

Hmm, St. Nicholas' ship, perhaps?

And up and down Flensburg's charming streets. It was very hilly there, which surprised me.

After tea in a tiny cafe with gothic vaults, it was time for Praetorius!

I had done some reading about Flensburg's Nikolaikirche beforehand, and was super-excited to hear this beauty, one of the most important Renaissance organs in northern Germany, which was commissioned by King Christian IV of Denmark.

I was delighted to see that Praetorius is enough of a draw to fill a church in Germany!

The performance was excellent: we heard great choral singing by the combined choirs of St. Nikolai, wonderful vocal soloists of the Himlische Cantorey, and the superb instrumentalists of Hamburger Ratsmusik, with my friend Simone Eckert playing gamba. 

Like in Praetorius' day, the congregation participated too! We got to sing along during a couple of hymn verses.

All in all, it was a splendid way to get into the Christmas spirit! 

Back in Lübeck, I finally rode in the Riesenrad!

It's astonishingly hard to get good pics from a ferris wheel, even before consuming Glühwein, but I managed a couple:

St. Jakobi

  

St. Marien

Yes, churches again! But hey, there are a lot of them around, they're very large, and make easy targets for photographers with freezing fingers in windy conditions. :-) 

And finally, a Christmas selfie from Flensburg! Merry Christmas from Stretch and Slim!