Chillout Kammerkonsert Philip Glass Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach: "Weihnachtsoratorium"

Bach's Christmas Oratorio, with its festive choruses, catchy arias, and Christmas chorales, illuminates the Christmas story. The Kantorei am Weinberg and the Collegium Musicum Sophiense, conducted by Julia Hedtfeld and Maximilian Schnaus, will perform it at the Sophienkirche on the second Sunday of Advent.

Johann Sebastian Bach / Oratorio de Pâques

For Easter Monday, Bach’s Oratorio for the holiday written exactly 300 years ago. Conductor Christophe Rousset leads Les Talens Lyriques in a score they know well.

Johann Sebastian Bach / Messe en si

Powerful, syncretic if we take the Credo in its most universal sense, the Mass in B minor is one of the most profound and hermetic monuments in the history of music. As Cioran once cheekily opined, “If anyone owes everything to Bach, it's God!”

Johann Sebastian Bach / Messe en si

Powerful, syncretic if we take the Credo in its most universal sense, the Mass in B minor is one of the most profound and hermetic monuments in the history of music. As Cioran once cheekily opined, “If anyone owes everything to Bach, it's God!”

Johann Sebastian Bach: Messe h-Moll BWV 232

Johann Sebastian Bach's "Mass in B minor," a UNESCO World Documentary Heritage site since 2015, remains one of humanity's greatest artistic legacies. This timeless masterpiece, composed around 300 years ago, still deeply moves us today. Bach's last major vocal work summarizes his compositional achievements, exploring themes of loneliness, despair, joy, and happiness. The trumpets' harmonies in the concluding "Dona nobis pacem" offer a poignant hope for a peaceful world. The Cologne Kantorei will perform this monumental work with support from the BachVokal chamber choir and the arcipelago baroque orchestra.

Klaus Mäkelä Johann Sebastian Bach Thomas Adès Johannes Brahms

During his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was legendary as an organist and as a cantor in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. From 1729, he also led the city’s Collegium Musicum, an ensemble that played every Friday at Café Zimmermann, Leipzig’s most famous coffee house.It might have been at such a Friday concert that Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 was played for the first time. Such suites, with small pieces based on various dance forms, were incredibly popular at the time. Bach wrote four orchestral suites, and the famous Air is one of the five movements in the third suite.The British composer Thomas Adès (b. 1971) got his breakthrough during the 1990s, and has since been one of the most performed and recognized orchestral composers of our time. The orchestral work Asyla was premiered in 1997 and is one of his most performed works. Asyla is the plural of asylum. The word means sanctuary or safe place, and psychiatric hospitals were called asylums for a long time. The composer plays with the double meaning in this diverse and nuanced work with four movements. The third movement, Ecstasio, describes a rave party in 1990s London.In 1880, Johann Brahms (1833-1897) discussed Johann Sebastian Bach’s music with some friends. He sat down by the piano and played a chaconne by Bach. While playing, he asked them: “How would you like to one day listen to a symphony movement written over this theme?”Bach was one of Brahm’s great idols, and the theme is from his Cantata No. 150, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich. When Brahms began the work on his Symphony No. 4 in 1884, he took up the theme again and used it as the foundation for his last and perhaps most impressive symphonic movement.

Guest performance Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suites 1‒6