Our CD takes us on musical journey from the Baroque to the Romantic era. It is the sequel to our CD "Great Joy - Große Freude 1" (HAEN98444).

No other holiday is as closely bound up with music and song as Christmas. And the playing of the familiar holiday songs is also an age-old element of music for brass instruments, cultivated for centuries by the traditional small brass ensembles playing from German church towers. As Johann Kuhnau, Bach's immediate predecessor as organist and choirmaster at St. Thomas' church in Leipzig, wrote in 1700, "When our waits blow their trombones from the tower playing a sacred song at the holidays, we are incomparably moved, and could think we were hearing the singing of angels." Even today, brass music is still capable of touching us this deeply. That is why the joyous, regal sound of the brass insturments are an indispensable part of the musical sounds of the Christmas season.

The Schwerin Brass-Collegium: In 1975 nine musicians from Schwerin got together on the initiative of trumpeter Hans-Joachim Drechsler to form the Schwerin Blechbläser-Collegium. It was the first ensemble of its kind in Germany. The Schweriner Blechbläser-Collegium cultivates nearly all styles of music with a repertoire of more than 200 works by more than 100 composers from six centuries.