Bach: Mass in B minor

Our 2023 season commenced with a European tour performing one of the pinnacles of Western music, Bach’s Mass in B minor, and culminated with a North American tour.

Programme

J.S. Bach: Mass in B minor BWV232

Bach put his Mass together at the end of his life, perhaps mindful of creating a lasting legacy, recycling pieces he had written in the previous decades and welding them together with new music, creating a compendium of all the different styles and approaches that he had taken during 30 or 40 years of music-making.

In his setting of the Latin text of the mass, Bach’s resolve was not merely to mime the gestures of belief, and to interpret doctrine via music of his own invention, but to extend the very range of music’s possibilities and through such exploration to make sense of the world in which he lived and whatever lay beyond it.

From the opening collective cry of ‘Kyrie’, to the winding fugues and ultimate radiance of ‘Dona nobis pacem’, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will reveal all the variety of a work which encompasses wild virtuosity, immeasurable pathos and exuberant joy. John Eliot Gardiner’s recordings (1985 and 2015) are regularly cited as benchmarks, revealing a changing approach to a work which rewards infinite exploration.

Photo credit: Paul Marc Mitchell

European tour April 2023:

Thursday 6 April 2023, 7.30pm
Sage Gateshead, Gateshead, UK

Saturday 8 April 2023, 7pm
Chapelle Royale, Château de Versailles, Versailles, France

Tuesday 11 April 2023, 8pm
Palau de la Música, Barcelona, Spain

Thursday 13 April 2023, 8pm
Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany

Saturday 15 April 2023, 8pm
Bozar, Brussels, Belgium

Monday 17 April 2023, 8pm
Philharmonie, Luxembourg

Tuesday 18 April 2023, 8pm
Alte Oper, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Monday 24 April 2023, 7.30pm
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, UK

North American tour October 2023:

Friday 20 October 2023, 7.30pm
Harris Theater, Chicago

Monday 23 October 2023, 7.30pm
Richardson Auditorium, McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton

Wednesday 25 October 2023, 8pm
Carnegie Hall, New York City

Saturday 28 October 2023, 2pm
Paroisse Saint François d’Assise, Ottawa

Reviews:

“John Eliot Gardiner’s matchless, life-enhancing Bach” – The Times

“The standing ovation and cheers were long and loud” – The Observer

“The best concert of my life” – Bachtrack

“The true stars of any work such as the Mass in B Minor are the chorus and orchestra, and the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists maintained consistently high levels” - Town Topics