The 2024 Festival Edition: CHORal TOTAL

What’s special about this year’s festival?
First of all, the fact that a long-planned project is finally becoming a reality. Because in our now 25 years of history, no project has been prepared so long in advance as the centrepiece of the 2024 Bachfest: back in 2020, under the festival title »BACH – We are FAMILY!«, Bach choirs from all over the world were meant to perform the complete annual cycle of chorale cantatas – the 66 cantatas that Thomaskantor Bach penned mostly during his second season of Leipzig cantatas, starting in June 1724. The pandemic temporarily put paid to our plans. But all that is now going to be made good – once again with Bach choirs from all over the world. And what I’m especially pleased about is that the date is even more fitting, exactly 300 years after the cycle’s first performance, and of course – as always in Leipzig – in Bach’s original venues.

Hence the festival title »CHORal Total«?
Yes and no. It’s true that the 16 concerts of the chorale cantata cycle form the backbone, so to speak, of this year’s festival – and I’m looking forward to seeing how many visitors take up the offer of a greatly reduced price for the full series. But this chorale anniversary is even a double anniversary. Many of the hymns transformed by Bach into elaborate chorale cantatas in this annual cycle will be half a millennium old in 2024. In 1524, Martin Luther published the first Protestant hymnbook in Wittenberg, laying the foundations for the grand tradition of Protestant chorales. Since then, not only do they provide an enriching atmosphere at any church service; for generations they have served composers as a basis for all kinds of musical experiments. This is why numerous other concerts and talks will be looking at this phenomenon from a number of very different angles. The chorales, but also the medium of choral singing – around 30 Bach choirs from virtually every continent will be here – are the silver thread running through the 2024 Bachfest. In short: CHORal Total!

And speaking of anniversaries: in 2024, Bach’s first Leipzig Passion oratorio, the St. John Passion, will also be 300 years old. What are you doing for that?
You could say we’ll be rolling out the red carpet for it, because we’ll be demonstrating its versatility and timelessness in three different formats. First of all a historically informed one, performed by the Thomanerchor with the same musical forces as at Bach’s time and played on the great Bach organ in St. Thomas’ Church. Then with a staged performance in St. Peter’s Church, presented by the Bonn-based ensemble Vox Bona, who gave us an overwhelming interpretation of the St. Matthew Passion back in 2019. And after that, with an open-air performance of the St. John Passion on the BachStage on the opening day of the festival we aim literally to overcome all barriers with »Johannes-Passion barrierefrei«, a barrier-free St. John Passion performed and simultaneously signed by Sing&Sign – with, we hope, thousands of people in the audience or following the livestream all over the world joining in with the chorales.

And apart from the Bach chorales?
... there are all kinds of other really amazing things to discover! I’m eager to see »J. S. Bach –The Apocalypse«, an extraordinary production by the Nederlandse Bachvereniging based on Bach choruses and arias with a tidy helping of creativity, which is sure to prove that the Thomaskantor would also have made a superb opera composer. In his ›imbrication‹ of Bach arias and Schubert’s »Winterreise«, Daniel Johannsen will show that Bach, the ›king of cantata‹ can dovetail perfectly with the ›king of Lied‹. Philippe Herreweghe’s B Minor Mass and the St. Matthew Passion under the baton of Václav Luks will be stellar moments for sure. But the two-part dialogue concert by John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir with the wonderful violinist Isabelle Faust is also set to be an illuminating event. In St. Nicholas’ Church, they’ll be alternating Bach’s motets with his Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin – the latter performed on the »Sleeping Beauty« Stradivarius, which Faust has strung with gut strings, as in Bach’s time.

So, despite CHORal Total there will also be instrumental music?
Of course, and it won’t be in short supply. Especially for people who love the very best in violin literature, our Bachfest offers a chance to listen in on another dialogue– an indirect one this time. Because the fantastic Greek violinist, Leonidas Kavakos, will be devoting two nocturnal concerts to the Sonatas and Partitas, in his case on modern strings, but on an instrument of no lesser importance: the »Willemotte« Stradivarius, a consummately crafted violin that the king of all violin-makers made in Cremona at the age of 90.
Violin literature plays a very special role altogether in this Bachfest: Chouchane Siranossian, our artist-in-residence, whom I venerate for her fiery, incredibly gripping style of play, will be performing works by Bach’s models; moreover, in our Latenight-Lounges in the composer houses she’ll be playing three versions of the legendary Chaconne. And in the opening concert she’ll be connecting to the chorale theme with the Violin Concerto by Alban Berg. And then there’s Hélène Schmitt, who in three concerts will be tackling Biber’s enigmatical Rosary Sonatas. You could say that this Bachfest will be a seventh heaven for violin enthusiasts! And for keyboard enthusiasts – with numerous recitals and concerts such as those by Andreas Staier, this year’s Bach Medal winner, Kit Armstrong, Christiane Schornsheim, Alexander Paley, Kristian Bezuidenhout and many more besides.

What about educational and free-admission events?
As every year, they make up more than one-third of all 160 events. Naturally we’re again holding the series of lectures by our research scholars and introductions to the works, all in German and English. But in addition to those, and by popular demand, we have created a series of talks where the artists themselves have their say. Once again, we warmly invite people to visit the exhibitions in our Bach Museum and Leipzig’s composer houses, and to join the organ and concert excursions to other places in Central Germany where Bach worked. BachStage on Market Square during the first three days offers a colourful Bach crossover programme, while the central railway station and the »bach for us« series offers an attractive family programme. In short, thanks also to the many faithful Bachfest partners and sponsors, the music city of Leipzig will be showing the entire breadth of what it has to offer.

And what are you looking forward to most of all?

Maybe at the 2024 Bachfest we’ll excel in something that the festival is already known for – the special mood that’s generated by the great proximity between the performers and the audience. For one thing, there are the numerous Bach choirs, who can hardly wait for it to start at last. Moreover, this year we’re again offering keen amateur singers the chance to sing in the festival choir, conducted by Ton Koopman, and in the chorale cantata cycle we’ll all be joining in the closing chorales. All in all, there’ll be an unusually large number of formats in which the line between passive listening and active music-making is blurred.
Whatever the case, I’m very much looking forward to it and warmly invite to Leipzig anyone who feels any kind of connection to Johann Sebastian Bach and wants to be inspired – or yearns to share their enthusiasm with like-minded people from all over the world.
A warm welcome to CHORal Total!