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Bach Christmas Oratorio – Wigmore Hall Residency
“Shout and exult!” Bach did not conceive the Christmas Oratorio as a work to be heard in a single performance. It was a collection of 6 cantatas – one for each feast day between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day – displaying the composer’s unerring talent for harvesting and revivifying his own material. The piece suggests to the listener a spiritual journey from the Nativity to the Epiphany, and is full of wondrously memorable colour - from the trumpets and…
Find out more »Bach’s Matthew Passion – Wigmore Hall Residency
Known even in Bach’s time as his ‘great’ Passion, the Matthew Passion lays out the narrative of Christ’s suffering and death in epic proportions: double chorus, double orchestra, and in music of staggering beauty and profundity. It unfolds with intractable dramatic momentum, as well as presenting a succession of tableaux that invite the listener to contemplate the many resonances of this journey. However, the work also suggests a more fundamental question: how, even in the depths of despair and subjected…
Find out more »Bach Mass in B Minor – Wigmore Hall Residency
“If music has the power to direct our entire existence towards nobleness, this music is great. Bach has achieved this.” Is there a piece in the entire Western musical canon that so fully embodies this sentiment? The B Minor Mass began its life as a job application, but was later assembled towards the end of Bach’s life as a statement of faith: in God, of course, but just as much in music: to offer healing, unity and promise. With its…
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