For the Fourth Sunday in Advent

Wagner has received his fair share of attention this year, but even he, even Mozart, even Beethoven, must ultimately take second place to the greatest composer of all. This evening, I shall be hearing the B minor Mass from the Aurora Orchestra and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, at Kings Place. That should be my final concert of the year: not a bad way to bow out. And I realise it will be the first performance of Bach's great mass that I shall have heard since starting to write here. In the meantime, here is Bach's Cantata  for the final Sunday in Advent, Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132. Karl Richter conducts the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra, with soloists Edith Mathis, Anna Reynolds, Peter Schreier, and Theo Adam. Those really were the days...

For Advent: Karl Richter conducts Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61

It is almost a fortnight late, I know, given that this cantata was intended for the first Sunday in Advent, yet we are still very much in the right season, despite the best efforts of marketing interests to persuade us that this time is somehow 'Christmas' or 'festive'. Besides, Leipzig observed the tempus clausum during both Lent and Advent (the second Lent, certainly not a time for 'Christmas parties'), so no concerted music would be performed at St Thomas's on Sundays following the first. We can perhaps afford to be a little less abstemious, especially in the face of so overwhelming a performance as this, responsive almost without effort to words, to theology, and to Bach's astounding musical invention. The chorale is, of course, Martin Luther's.











Richter's Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra perform; the soloists, as many listeners will doubtless recognise from their voices alone, are Edith Mathis, Peter Schreier, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.