In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began a two-year journey, setting out to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in one sitting, across 36 locations on 6 continents. For Yo-Yo, Bach’s 300-hundred-year-old music is one extraordinary example of how culture connects us and can help us to imagine and build a better future. In an unforgettable experience the 19 times Grammy ® Award winner and internationally acclaimed cellist performed the Cello Suites at the overwhelming Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens. Yo-Yo Ma says: “These suites are so meaningful. They’re not only companions and friends, but they’ve also been reference points in my life”. “Soft sounds around me suggested that others were caught up in similarly strong emotions. How Ma has this effect on people is a mystery: I suspect it has to do with the warmth he brings to music that is fundamentally beyond comprehension. He makes the godlike human.” Alex Ross, The New Yorker
Kit Armstrong: Bach´s Goldberg Variations and its predecessors
When Kit Armstrong was only 14, he overcame his mentor Alfred Brendel’s reluctance to take on pupils. Said Brendel: “He played so beautifully that I thought to myself, ‘I have to make time for him.’ It was a performance that really led you from the first to the last note.” Soon Armstrong was winning international prizes both as pianist and as composer and was appearing as soloist at some of the world’s foremost venues. At the Concertgebouw, Armstrong mesmerized his audience with Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations – preceded by earlier polyphonic variation masterpieces by William Byrd, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and John Bull. “Enlightening and exhilarating.” (Revierpassagen). “Armstrong’s phenomenal recital was so exceptional that every attempt to describe it falls short.” (NRC)
J.S. Bach: Christmas Oratorio – Ballet by John Neumeier
“Rejoice, exult” – John Neumeier turns Bach’s Christmas Oratorio into an experience that confronts us all with the most basic questions of trust, hope, faith, doubt and self-sacrifice: “My choreography is not a religious undertaking. We perform to Bach’s music, for a few hours unifying individuals of many different cultural and religious backgrounds. For me, the basic human values expressed through the choreography are always the most important thing. Therefore, in my ballet, Mary is known simply as ‘the Mother’ and Joseph as ‘her Husband’.” “Once again it is impossible not to be impressed by the flawless technique of the ensemble … When at the end Lloyd Riggins tap-dances his way across the stage like Fred Astaire, the Christmas Oratorio is complete” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Heinrich Schiff
Heinrich Schiff is one of today’s top ranking cellists. In an interview recorded at his home in Austria, he talks about his musicianship, his celebrated career as a performer, to his move towards conducting in becoming the director of England’s Northern Sinfonia, with whom he is seen rehearsing Beethoven and Bartók. Performance extracts include Schiff playing Bach sonatas and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in G Op. 126.
St Matthew Passion BWV 244
Recorded live from the Romanesque church in Alpirsbach, Enoch zu Guttenberg conducts the Neubeuern Choral Society and the Munich Bach Collegium, with soloists Claes-Hakon Ahnjsö (tenor), Margaret Marshall (soprano), Jard van Nes (contralto), Aldo Baldin (tenor) and Anton Scharinger (bass). The culmination of Bach’s writing for the Church, this massive choral work is a deeply moving combination of joy and grief which attains the utmost heights of expressiveness.
John Neumeier at Work
The American dancer and choreographer John Neumeier is renowned for his work with the Hamburg Ballet. He was filmed with the company over a busy six-month period, which encompassed rehearsals for Artus Sage, the creation of The Magnificat, and performances in Hamburg, Paris and Avignon of works including his acclaimed St Matthew Passion. Throughout the programme Neumeier talks about his methods and his creative influences.
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Cantor of St.Thomas’s
“Too operatic and too long!” – one opinion of Bach’s music, on his appointment to his last, longest and most famous post as Cantor of Leipzig’s Thomasschule. Brian Cox portrays Bach (1685-1750) in a film based on the records of his employers, the City Council – the story of his fight to defend position, status and, above all else, his music. Performances, in authentic style, are directed by Sir Roger Norrington.
The music content of the film includes excerpts from: The Art of Fugue, the St. Matthew Passion, Fugue in C Minor for Organ, Cantatas No. 131, 71 and 123, Passacaglia in C Minor for Organ, Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord in E Minor, Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, Invention for Harpsichord No. 5 in E Flat, Sonata No. 1, the St. John Passion, The Wedding Cantata, Mass in B Minor and The Musical Offering.
Harnoncourt conducts Bach: Advent Concert from Melk Abbey
From the magnificent surroundings of Melk Abbey in Austria, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus Wien present a glorious programme of favourite choral works by Johann Sebastian Bach: two of his best loved cantatas alongside the celebratory Magnificat in D Major, BWV 243. Filmed in December 2000, the concert features a superb quartet of some of the finest singers of the time, including soprano Christine Schäfer and tenor Ian Bostridge. The Arnold Schoenberg Chor completes the line-up for this inspiring concert for Advent.
Enoch zu Guttenberg conducts Bach’s B Minor Mass
Any performance of Bach’s monumental Mass in B minor is a special occasion, and so it proves with this 1998 performance filmed in the magnificent setting of the Wieskirche, the pilgrimage church of Steingaden Abbey near Schongau in Bavaria, a dazzling example of the exuberance of the late German baroque. Enoch zu Guttenberg brings a lifetime of love and engagement with Bach with him to conduct the and the Neubeuern Choral Society and the Orchester der Klangverwaltung with a special combination of authority and passion, which extends to the outstanding line-up of soloists. The result is truly a peformance to treasure.
Albrecht Mayer in Concert
Unlike the piano, the violin or even the flute, the oboe is a relatively rare instrument for a solo career. And when a soloist such as Albrecht Mayer plays the oboe, one wishes composers had written more works for this weetly mellow instrument. Critics write about the “divine spark” that inspires his playing, and about the “miraculous oboe” that turns into “an instrument of seduction.” With his particularly warm tone and exceptionally broad palette of nuances, it’s no surprise that Albrecht Mayer is one of today’s most sought-after international oboists.