»The most astounding and pleasurable of adventures«

Bach’s virtuoso treatment of chorales thrilled the Bach pioneers of the 19th century too. One year after his legendary revival of the St. Matthias Passion, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy composed a small series of chorale cantatas, based – for example – on Martin Luther’s hymn »Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein« and Paul Gerhard’s »O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden«. To his friend Eduard Devrien, he wrote: »If it bears some resemblance to Seb. Bach, I cannot help it, for I have written it as I felt, and if the words happened to make me feel as old Bach did, so much the better.« Indeed, these now rarely performed pieces are compelling examples of a kind of compositional reception of Bach’s chorale cantatas that never descends into pure imitation: they are full of creative and light-hearted ideas such as only Mendelssohn was capable of writing.

On the work of Johannes Brahms too, an intensive preoccupation with Bach left deep marks – as it did on his concert programmes. In the early 1870s, when he was concert director of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, he performed a series of Bach cantatas, among them the chorale cantatas »Christ lag in Todesbanden« (»Christ lay in the snares of death«), BWV 4, and »Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis« (»I had much grief«), BWV 21. For the performance, he swathed them in the sounds of a Romantic orchestra and for some arias, which in the original had only a continuo accompaniment, wrote independent string parts. For Brahms, the concerts were pure pleasure. Looking back, he waxed lyrical about them to the Bach biographer, Philipp Spitta: »For me these cantatas were [...] the most astounding and pleasurable of adventures in concert life«. Given the brilliant cast of musicians performing these works on 15 June 2024 in St. Thomas’ Church, we can count on an equally »pleasurable« concert!