“Solo” Bach

Artists

Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir

Hana Blazikova, sopran

Maarten Engeltjes, counter tenor

Tilman Lichdi, tenor

Klaus Mertens, bass

Ton Koopman, conductor

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Johannes-Passion, BWV 245 (1724)

Bach and the Most Intimate Passion

When he arrived in Leipzig in 1723, Bach set himself the task of completely renewing the repertoire that was being heard in the city’s churches. The fruit of this effort are his cantata cycles –the culmination of an entire tradition that started with the very same Luther’s reform– and his passions, which are the summit of Western art. On Good Friday of 1724 Bach presented the first of them, written on the Gospel of Saint John, a passion not as monumental as the one written three years later on Saint Matthew, but with a dazzling dramatic, doctrinal and musical cohesion, as it has been remarked by many specialists, who take it as a work of worship. Ton Koopman, one of the greatest Bachian interpreters of our days, comes with his well-trained hosts from Amsterdam to penetrate his most intimate secrets.