This new release from ARS Produktion presents the world-premiere recording of Friedrich Schneider's Christus das Kind (Christ the Child).

Any discussion of the German oratorio tradition during the first half of the 19th century will include the name of Friedrich Schneider, the court Kapellmeister of Anhalt-Dessau, although usually focusing on Das Weltgericht (The Last Judgment), his second contribution to the genre and one of the most frequently performed oratorios of the early 19th century.

The fixation on Das Weltgericht is paradigmatic for the consolidation of the concert business as well as for musicological research practice concentrating on individual works at the expense of a rich and rewarding oratorio oeuvre. In the case of Schneider's musical output, this inclination was so severe that he was colloquially known as the "Weltgericht-Schneider".

His oratorio Christus das Kind, which has been recorded here for the first time, was not nearly as well known as Das Weltgericht during Schneider's lifetime; it forms the beginning of a cycle of four full-length oratorios about the life of Jesus, which was a novelty at the time.

Christus das Kind comprises three unspecified parts that can be summarised with the following titles:

1. Annunciation
2. Birth, Worship by the shepherds and the wise men from the east, and Flight
3. Return to Israel and Praise.

The main textual basis is formed by the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, supplemented by texts from the Old Testament, particularly Isaiah.