Bach Motets & Solo Violin Music: Concert 1 – Out of the Shadows by Bach, Johann, Jr., N. M., Bach, J. M., Georg Pisendel, Bach, Johann Christoph, Matteis, Nicola, Bach, J. S., Biber, Alates (2024/2024), Dirigent Jonathan Sells, St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, United Kingdom

Bach’s motets have been part of the Monteverdi Choir’s repertoire for over five decades, giving the choir the opportunity to display technical virtuosity as well as a vivid conception of the drama behind Bach’s interpretation of the religious texts. Many of the motets were composed for funerals, but the music’s variety and frequent exuberance belies this fact; we are constantly aware of Bach’s questing, imaginative mind in these explorations of man’s relationship to the divine. All of Bach’s six authenticated motets were written between 1723 and 1727 for St Thomas’ Church, Leipzig, where Bach was appointed as director of music in 1723. Each of them is endlessly fascinating, and each inhabits its own sound world. Bach’s masterful use of canon, fugue and counterpoint, and the brilliant exploitation of double-choir sonorities, are perfectly matched by the Monteverdi Choir’s virtuosity. These miraculous pieces will be interspersed with Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin performed by Kati Debretzeni, the leader of the English Baroque Soloists, in London and Isabelle Faust in Leipzig. The first concert also gives an opportunity to hear motets by older members of Bach’s family, alongside instrumental pieces by their contemporaries.