Akadamie puts on spectacular celebration of Bach’s musical offerings

Local musicians in spectacular celebration of 300 years of masterpieces by JS Bach.

Madeleine Easton and the Bach Akademie Australia wound up their season with spectacular cantatas. Picture: Noni Carroll Photography

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Three hundred years ago Johann Sebastian Bach was grudgingly given a job that would go on to change the face of music for ever more. He was third choice for the post of Kantor in Leipzig, Germany, a job which entailed supervising and composing for church services and civic occasions as well as teaching young students.

His friend Georg Philipp Telemann had knocked it back and another candidate dropped out. It was a case of third time extremely lucky for the music world for over the next 27 years, until his death in 1750, Bach wrote 300 cantatas as well as the two great Passions – St Matthew and St John – and the B minor Mass, and hundreds of other important works.

Madeleine Easton, founder and artistic director of Bach Akademie Australia, describes Bach’s appointment as a “sliding door moment”, just like the one she had in 2015 when she woke up in the middle of the night and decided she wanted to start an orchestra, imagining standing on the stage of the City Recital Hall conducting the glorious cantata Wachet auf.

That dream came true when the Akademie closed its 2023 season with a superbly performed program of three cantatas and a notoriously challenging motet in the hall’s warm acoustic. All the stops were pulled out for the concert with 16 top-notch singers and 22 musicians on stage, all conducted with energy, precision and a keen sense of enjoyment by Easton.

After a brief organ solo by Nathan Cox – the chorale prelude In Dulce Jubilo, a carol which neatly went full circle with a chorale of the same name ending the evening – the choir and orchestra gave a joyful performance of Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (May our mouths be filled with laughter).

Trumpet fanfares, flutes and timpani accompanied the bubbling choral runs with music that Bach used in one of his orchestral suites.

This was the audience’s first chance to enjoy the Akademie’s excellent soloists with soprano Susannah Lawergren, tenor Timothy Reynolds, alto Hannah Fraser and bass Andrew O’Connor all featuring in the arias, recitatives and duets. Instrumentalists also got their moment in the spotlight with oboist Adam Masters and trumpeter Leanne Sullivan both prominent in the mix.

The breath control and intonation of the 16 voices were all put to the test in the next work, the motet Singet dem Herrn (Sing to the Lord). This is arguably the most impressive of the motets and with a high degree of difficulty. This was all managed magnificently accompanied by a small chamber group.

The second cantata on the program, Jesu, der du meine Seele (Jesu, it is by you that my soul) was a strong contrast to the first. Here Bach brings gravity and anguish – the doubts of sinners and ultimate salvation – in the seven sections, the highlight of which is a gorgeous duet for soprano and alto (Anna Sandstrom and mezzo Stephanie Dillon).

The gravitas of this cantata set it up nicely for the irresistible bounce and energy of Wachet auf, with the watchman calling on the citizens of Jerusalem to wake up for the coming of the Lord.

The final chorale made for a spectacular climax to the night with its final line “ewig in dulci jubilo (forever in sweet rejoicing)”. With that the audience exited Easton’s sliding door celebration of Bach, just where they had come in.

DETAILS

CONCERT Bach Akademie Australia: Music in the Castle of Heaven

WHERE City Recital Hall

WHEN November 23, 2023