JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Gardiner’s award-winning Bach Cantata series on Soli Deo Gloria continues with volume 9 in the series featuring Cantatas for the seventeenth and eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. Recorded live in October 2000.

We join John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists on their Bach Cantata pilgrimage in the spectacular dark brown gothic Allhelgonakyrkan (All Saints Church) in Lund.

The concert explodes into action as the long fanfare-like ritornello for solo trumpet and strings herald the opening of BWV 148 Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens (Give the Lord the Glory due his Name). This grand opening leads the way for the chorus to enter with a rousing delivery of the psalm verse, ‘Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.’

This is then followed by the chorale cantata BWV 114 Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost (Ah, dear Christians, be brave), from Bach’s second Leipzig cycle. In typical Lutheran fashion, the text begins in despair and ends with the hope of redemption. The contrast between despondency and consolation is clear in the second movement for tenor, obbligato flute and continuo. Sung by the fantastic Mark Padmore,

    “This is one in a series of bleak but hypnotic arias epitomising the beleaguered soul at which Bach excels”, states Gardiner.

We then hear BWV 47 Wer sich selbst erhöhet, der soll erniedriget werden (Whoever himself exalteth shall be abashed) which opens with a mighty opening movement for chorus. Gardiner states in his notes that this was a choral fugue that grew on the choir, and by the encore of the second concert it had registered its considerable power with both the performers and the listeners.

The programme ends with the most instrumentally conceived of Bach’s double-choir motets, BWV 226 Der Geist hilft unser Schwacheit auf (The Spirit Helpeth Our Infirmities). Interestingly, this is the only one for which original doubling parts for winds and strings have survived. It is also the only motet composed by Bach for which a specific purpose is known - the funeral service of JH Ernesti, the rector of the Thomasschule in Leipzig.

We then travel to the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and open the programme with BWV 96 Herr Christ, der ein’ge Gottessohn (Lord Christ, the only Son of God). The cantata is closely connected to a 200-year-old hymn by Elisabeth Cruciger, a poet who came from an emigrant aristocratic Polish family.

Next comes BWV 169 Gott soll allein mein Herze haben (God alone shall have my heart), the last and considered by many to be the most consistently beautiful of Bach’s Cantatas for solo alto. This is then followed by the superb choral cantata BWV 116 Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ, first performed on 26 November 1724.

The choir then retreat to the very crucible where for the last twenty-seven years of his life Bach worked. They form a horseshow around his final resting place and sing a cappella what legend has identified as Bach’s very last piece, BWV 668 Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit, the so-called Deathbed Chorale.