The Waldramer shepherds, the youngest just turned five, have been rehearsing their texts since October. Your performance is getting closer. On the fourth weekend of Advent, after a two-year Corona break, there will be an Alpine Advent singing again in the churches of Degerndorf and Waldram – “despite all the pre-Christmas activity, all the flooding of kitsch and superficiality,” says Sissy Mayrhofer.
This time she didn’t write the shepherd’s play, it’s in the hands of Herbert Brustmann. However, Sissy Mayrhofer leads through the program and reads texts she wrote herself, including four prayers from different people at the time of Jesus’ birth. The Waldramer singers, the Bolzwanger Dreigesang and the Bolzwanger Geigenmusik, the Reindl family and the Waldramer Tanzlmusik sing and make music.
Sissy Mayrhofer has been telling the Christmas story for children and adults for decades. And always new.
(Photo: Manfred Neubauer)
The Waldramer Adventsingen came into being more than 60 years ago by Franz Mayrhofer and Alois Brustmann. As Sissy Mayrhofer reports, they had attended the boys’ seminar in Freising and were inspired by the cathedral conductor Max Eham and the prefect Wolfgang Langgassner, who was enthusiastic about folk music. “After visiting the Salzburg Advent Singing, the idea came up to organize our own Advent Singing in Waldram.” An unusual thought at the time. But a convincing one. “The enthusiasm of the Waldram audience was great, and the singers and musicians got it too.”
It didn’t take long for the Waldramer Adventsingen to travel. There were guest performances all over the Oberland, in Munich and even in Sweden. The concerts in the churches of Waldram and Degerndorf emerged as fixed points. The main pillars are still the breast man, Schuppan and Mayrhofer families, the Korntheuer family from Bolzwang and other musicians from their circle of friends.
“It has become a good custom,” says Sissy Mayrhofer. This also includes forming and filling the entire program “from within our own ranks”. There would be no need to buy famous groups “if everyone works together to bring the Christmas song treasure to life”. In the meantime, the children and grandchildren have been on the stage for a long time.
The guests should come to rest and reflection for an hour. The concern of the participants is “conceivably simple,” says Elisabeth Brustmann. “We want to get people in the mood for the forthcoming feast of the Holy Night.”
The concert in the Degerndorf church on Saturday, December 17th, starts at 7 p.m., and on Sunday, December 18th, in the Waldram church at 6 p.m. As always, proceeds from both events go to a good cause.