Bach, Johannespassion (St. John’s Passion) BWV 245

Johann Sebastian Bach composed the St. John Passion in Cöthen during the winter of 1722/23. The text is drawn from chapters 18 and 19 of the Gospel according to St. John, and includes some excerpts from St. Mathew and additional text from a Passion poem by the Hamburg town councillor Barthold Heinrich Brockes. The composer led the first performance at the Good Friday services on 7 April 1724 at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, where he had since become municipal music director and cantor of the Thomasschule. This Passion is heard less often today than the St. Matthew Passion, perhaps because the St. John Passion is in some ways more raw and evokes the anguish of the Passion more painfully than the St. Matthew work. A musician’s musician, an occasional firebrand and a constant paradox – Nikolaus Harnoncourt (born in 1929) is one of the most profound and intriguing conductors of our time. Considered one of the world’s leading specialists of Baroque music, he has long since turned his attention to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and even to Jacques Offenbach and Johann Strauss. He spent many years as a cellist with the Wiener Symphoniker before founding the “Concentus Musicus Wien” with his wife Alice in 1953. It soon became one of the world’s most respected ensembles specializing in the performance of early music on original instruments. In the 1970s, Harnoncourt joined forces with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle to stage a series of Monteverdi operas at the Zurich Opera House. This universally acclaimed cycle contributed to a renaissance of Monteverdi’s music and set standards for early Baroque performance practice. He later began to turn his attention more and more to the music of Mozart, whom he considers “the most romantic of all composers”. Harnoncourt did not make his official debut at the Salzburg Festival until 1992. He has been conducting there regularly since then and is a sought-after guest conductor of such reputable ensembles as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Weltliche Musik (Secular Music)

In this program featuring excerpts from secular works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Nikolaus Harnoncourt strives to reveal something of the mystery and fascination of Bach’s compositional art in the domain of non-sacred music. With his Concentus musicus Wien and the vocal soloists Janet Perry and Robert Holl, Harnoncourt interprets passages and movements from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, Bach’s arrangement of Benedetto Marcello’s Oboe Concerto and parts of the “Coffee Cantata”. “In my view, Bach is a total musician. No matter in what musical domain he lands, he immediately deploys his full resources and creates the greatest music that is imaginable in his time in this respective domain. […] I feel that sacred and secular music are of equal value in the lives of all significant composers, because an important composer of that time was a believer, and he didn’t make any distinction between the spiritual and the secular. In his secular life, he is just as pious as in his spiritual one, and when he eats and drinks, when he lives and loves, he is as much of a Christian as when he goes to church to pray on Sunday. He considers life as a whole, and he will write a symphony or a dance for the greater glory of God to the same extent that he would a Passion. […] German musicians… repeatedly attempted to combine the dance-like, short-winded style of French music with the eruptive, spontaneous and passionate, wild style of the Italians. The result was a well-pondered, ‘composed’ music – the Germans of that time called it ‘worked out’ – and when one hears these expressions, and knows who the greatest master of this music was, namely Bach, then one can say: this music is ‘worked out’ music. But in reality it is fulfilled music, music which comes from the innermost and the highest of man.” (Nikolaus Harnoncourt)

Bach, Weihnachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio) BWV 248

Considered one of the world’s leading specialists of Baroque music, Nikolaus Harnoncourt founded the “Concentus Musicus Wien” in 1953. It has since become one of the world’s most respected ensembles specializing in the performance of early music on original instruments or faithful reproductions. With its opulent decor and gilt ornamentation, the Austrian Baroque church of Waldhausen provides a setting evocative of Bach’s times. An added highlight of the program is the retelling of the Nativity story with the magnificent carved figures of two master wood-carvers of the Baroque period from Upper Austria. Also heard on the recording are the distinguished tenor Peter Schreier, bass Robert Holl and the Tölzer Boys’ Choir.

Bach, Matthäuspassion (St. Matthew’s Passion) BWV 244

Karl Richter, the world-renowned Bach specialist who died in 1981, recorded the St. Matthew Passion at the splendid Benedictine abbey of Ottobeuren with two choruses, his Munich Bach Orchestra and the outstanding soloists Peter Schreier (Evangelist), Ernst Gerold Schramm (Jesus), Siegmund Nismgern (Judas) as well as Helen Donath, Julia Hamari, Walter Berry and Horst Laubenthal. Director Hugo Käch took the cross as his main motif for his stage setting by using a gigantic cross above the performers to suggest menace and oppression as well as protection. Richter’s style blends the solid craftsmanship of a Leipzig “cantor” and a profound need for the freedom of improvisation. “I cannot gauge the tempo from the metronome; I have to take to it from my pulse, since the pulse is linked to the center of man, the heart.” (Karl Richter)

Bach, Johannespassion (St. John’s Passion), BWV 245

Over the course of his long career as conductor, organist and harpsichordist, Karl Richter (1926-1981) became synonymous with Bach. He founded the Munich Bach Choir and the Munich Bach Orchestra, and helped trigger the Bach revival in the 1950s. He recorded all the major choral and orchestral works of Bach, including more than 100 cantatas. Although Richter saw several dramatic shifts in Baroque performance practice during his lifetime, he remained true to his own style, which was considered revolutionary in the 1950s and 60s. This was a “de-romanticized” Bach which featured a reduced body of performers more in keeping with the composer’s original forces. Richter’s style also accented a cool, brisk, almost abstract attitude toward the music. Our recording with the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra features such world-renowned soloists as Helen Donath, Julia Hamari, Peter Schreier and Horst Laubenthal.

Bach, h-Moll Messe (Mass in B minor) BWV 232

Karl Richter (1926-1981), founder of the Munich Bach Choir and Munich Bach Orchestra, was a noted conductor, organist and harpsichordist. The B minor Mass was one of his “warhorses”, which he often performed on concert tours. One of the most perceptive assessments of Richter’s reading of the B minor Mass appeared in a Munich daily following his last performance of the work in November 1980: “One of the reasons why Richter’s account of the B minor Mass is so compelling is that, in contrast to the historicizing Bach readings of today, it takes into account both the present and the 250-year-old history of Bach interpretation.” The work was filmed in the splendid Baroque abbey church of Diessen in Bavaria, which dates from Bach’s time.

The Vienna Christmas Concert

The Wiener Symphoniker perform a grand Advent concert at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral featuring a diverse program conducted by Marie Jacquot. The concert includes works from various composers, such as Michael Praetorius, Leopold Mozart, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Albert Malotte, and Adolphe Adam. Soprano Fatma Said, tenor Jonathan Tetelman, and the Singverein will explore global Christmas traditions, with classics like Bach’s “Jesus bleibet meine Freude” and “O du fröhliche” concluding the event.

Bach, Four Orchestral Suites

Four delightful performance programmes feature the leading international chamber orchestra which specialises in authentic renditions on fine reproduction period instruments.

Bach’s orchestral suites (BWV 1066-9), No. 1 in C, No. 2 in B minor, and Nos 3 and 4 in D major, were recorded in the magnificent baroque surroundings of the Palace Het Loo, built by William of Orange. A different part of the palace forms an elegant and fitting backdrop to each performance. Baroque specialist Ton Koopman conducts his orchestra from the harpsichord.