We are very pleased that BBC Radio 4 got in touch to ask if we would contribute to a programme about J. S. Bach. Producer Katharine Longworth was interested in our work playing Bach cantatas within the liturgy of Lutheran Vespers and wanted to record us performing and speaking about J. S. Bach as part of Bach: Man of Passion, one of a number of programmes to be broadcast during Holy Week this year.

Image: Joseph Ford Thompson Photography

Well, Bach: Man of Passion went to air yesterday afternoon. The dense but informative and entertaining half hour is in no small part to the Bach scholar de nos jours Professor John Butt (of Glasgow University and the Dunedin Consort) who finds such richesse in all aspects of Bach’s life – but keeps coming back to the music. Soprano Nicola Corbishley and organist Simon Lloyd recorded the aria Öffne dich from cantata BWV 61 Nun komm der Heiden heiland (which they had performed together in the 40th Anniversary Concert in November last year, above right). Nicola and Simon, along with Cheyney Kent then spoke with John Butt briefly about the service of Bach Vespers, how performing the cantata within a church service can be a unique experience.

You can listen to the programme here – you are also able to listen to the complete aria recording here, courtesy of the BBC.

What a lovely start to the day. Petroc Trelawny talked about us on the ‘Bach before 7’ slot on BBC Radio 3’s Breakfast show, describing our group and its work and referring to the 40th anniversary concert in November last year. They then played the duet ‘Mein freund ist mein’ from cantata BWV 140, featuring our old friend oboist Anthony Robson. The broadcast is here, from about 25 mins in or listen to an excerpt below:

Our busy start to the year continues with a performance of Bach’s oratorio in miniature, Cantata BWV 22, Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe.

The work shows that Bach had mastered the composition of a dramatic scene… [and] shows elements which became standards for Bach’s Leipzig cantatas and even the Passions, including a “frame of biblical text and chorale around the operatic forms of aria and recitative”, “the fugal setting of biblical words” and “the biblical narrative … as a dramatic scena”. (Wikipedia)

We look forward to performing this at St. Mary-at-Hill, just a couple of days after returning from performing BWV 79 in a special Reformation-year-evensong in Cambridge.

Image: via King’s College Cambridge Chapel Choir Twitter

We are delighted to have been invited to join the Choir of King’s College Cambridge and of the London German Church to perform cantata BWV 79 at a special Evensong as part of the Lutheran council of Great Britain’s Roadmap Storymobile tour. The tour is helping to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, of which there is more information via the website reformation500.uk. This unique event is in the Chapel of King’s College at 5.30pm on Thursday 23 February.

The City Bach Collective will be led by our leader-director Hazel Brooks and the music of the service conducted by the choirmaster of the College Choir, Stephen Cleobury.

We are very happy to have been invited back to perform the music for the St. Anne’s Lutheran Church Bach Vespers services in 2017. This is the 500th anniversary year of the Reformation (about which one can read much more on this dedicated page) and we are looking forward to contributing to the unique and special occasion that will be each and every event in association with St. Anne’s throughout the year.

The first of our Bach Vespers is on Sunday 29 January, as ever, at 6.30pm. We will perform cantata BWV 72, Alles nur nach Gottes Willen, whose central alto recitative reflects the iterated Beatitudes of the sermon on the mount, from which many Epiphany Gospel readings are drawn.

We hope that you can join us for this  performance, which includes other contemporaneous German baroque music. And don’t forget that we are also performing cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, on 8 Jan at the Dutch Church in the City.