Performance on 3 - Edinburgh International Festival 2010 - EIF: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Petroc Trelawny presents John Adams's oratorio retelling the Nativity story, recorded at the opening night of the 2010 Edinburgh International Festival. John Adams revisits the subject most famously rendered in music by Handel in Messiah, giving the story a 21st century treatment with a female perspective, and adding texts from medieval mystery plays and Spanish poetry. Adams writes: "as beautiful as the telling is in the New Testament, it is nevertheless an imagined secondhand experience, written by men." Adams chooses to set poetry by Spanish women alongside the gospel account: "the intensity of their imagery and feeling imparts a special authenticity to the work". Mary's experience of pregnancy in El Niño represents the pregnancy of women throughout the ages, much as the birth of Jesus epitomises the birth of all children. El Niño was written to celebrate the new millennium in 2000, and it is a radiantly joyful large-scale work in two parts, with a vocal cast of three soloists, a countertenor trio, adult and children's choruses and orchestra, plus an electronic "sound-environment". John Adams: El Niño Jessica Rivera (soprano) Kelley O'Connor (mezzo soprano) Willard White (baritone) Edinburgh Festival Chorus NYCoS National Girls Choir Theatre of Voices BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra James Conlon (conductor).