Christmas Concerti reaching across Europe: with Ross Sadler

Like the Pastorale, the Christmas Concerto eventually made its way to other countries. The most obvious path was via German composers such as Molter and Pez. who were sent there by their employers for further
study. Both of these composers produced Christmas Concertos that owed at least something to the
Italian model. The two concertos in question are quite long in comparison with most of their Italian
counterparts, but they also include a different feature ‘aria’ type movements –
the term referring to a melody which has a songlike character about it. But German speaking lands also saw some highly individual Christmas Concerti, which owed little to the Italian model and the program looks at a work by Schmelzer/ These works moved away from the standard ‘shepherd’ model.