No 254 Closing Concert

In October 2015, UNESCO added the autograph score of Johann Sebastian Bach’s B Minor Mass to the Memory of the World Register. In doing so, it honoured Bach’s extraordinary compositional skill that still exercises an »inspiring influence on mankind« more than 250 years after it was written. And indeed, Bach’s sole setting of the complete Ordinary of the Mass ranks to this day with the most enthralling and popular works in the entire history of music, the deeper content of which is always open to new interpretation. The traditional performance at the close of the Leipzig Bachfest has this year been entrusted to the Constellation Choir & Orchestra under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner.