Dialogues

Bach’s playlist ...
»besides Froberger ... he loved and studied the works of ... certain good old French composers, Buxtehude ...  In his latter years, he had high esteem for: Fux, Caldara, Handel, Kaiser, Hasse, both Grauns, Telemann, Zelenka, Benda and in general all that was particularly to be esteemed in Berlin and Dresden.«
This is what Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach confided to the first Bach biographer, Forkel. In doing so, Bach’s son wanted to make it clear that his father had throughout his life looked beyond the end of his own nose and was very well aware – even without undertaking distant travels – which music was setting the tone at the major German courts, as well as in Vienna, Venice, Paris and London. At home, whether in Weimar, Köthen or Leipzig, he constantly placed that music in dialogue with his own works.

... provides for some unusual dialogues at the Bachfest ...
This approach is what the 2026 Bachfest is all about. Not least because exactly 300 years ago, in 1726, the Thomaskantor for the first time presented not only cantatas of his own writing to the Leipzig churchgoers, but also a dozen works by his cousin, the Meiningen court kapellmeister Johann Ludwig Bach – wonderful pieces that capella sollertina is currently rediscovering in the first complete recording of them, and with which they will make their Bachfest debut. Bach’s keen, but sadly unfulfilled wish to communicate at least just once with the great Handel, is fulfilled for us by the absolute Handel authority: the electrifying virtuosos of Il Pomo d’Oro – with two major works from the early period of both great masters. And with Martin Haselböck and his Wiener Akademie, we embark on an extremely enlightening voyage of discovery into the scintillating dialogue between the Leipzig Thomaskantor and the musical protagonists of the imperial city of Vienna.

... including even with Bach’s sharpest critic ...
The musical competition between Bach and his sharpest critic, Johann Adolph Scheibe, is especially instructive: here, the legendary Concerto Köln will present the musical output of both protagonists in a wholly impartial manner. Because Scheibe was not only an important music journalist; he was also a very capable composer who was set on applying the highest precept of the Enlightenment, obedience to the natural order, to music – which is why Bach’s music appeared to him as »turgid« und »contrary to nature«. 

... and a very special bonus track.
»That you should pass on this small knowledge to other good subjects who are not satisfied with the usual twiddle-twaddle« – this is precisely what Bach hoped his private pupils would do in their turn. And indeed, all of them developed, as the Thomaskantor was wont to say, »into students of whom I need not be ashamed«. Reinhard Goebel and the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum confirm this grandiloquent statement, this time by means of a virtuosic dialogue with artist-in-residence Mahan Esfahani, and in a most impressive manner. Because the distinguishing characteristic of Bach’s top pupils is that thanks to their teacher they possessed, on the one hand, rock-solid and outstanding musical skills, but also that Bach, excellent teacher that he was, by no means hampered their own artistic originality and innovative power in any way. And that is unquestionably the greatest compliment one can pay to Bach, the teacher!