Royal Academy of Music / Kohn Foundation Bach Cantata Series

‘Es wartet alles auf dich’ was first performed in Leipzig in 1726, on the seventh Sunday after Trinity; but the text bears relationship with harvest thanksgiving as well as with the appointed Gospel reading which recounts the feeding of the five thousand. As so often in Bach’s cantatas the musical focal point lies in the superbly crafted opening chorus with its extended instrumental ritornellos and contrapuntal vocal writing. We may confidently conjecture that Bach himself thought highly of this work since a few years later he parodied not only its opening chorus but also three further movements in his ‘short’ Mass in G minor (BWV 235).

Bach’s autograph score of ‘Widerstehe doch der Sünde’ has not survived but it is likely that the cantata was first performed at Weimar in 1714 during Lent. The work is scored for solo alto voice with strings and continuo and begins with an aria of striking harmonic boldness and melodic beauty. Its dissonances and affective diminished sevenths imprint themselves at once in our memory, colouring with originality the almost unremittingly severe text.

‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ was first performed at Leipzig during the Easter season of 1724. Like many of the cantatas which Bach produced for his first Leipzig Easter the music goes back to his time as Music Director at the Weimar court. The cantata begins with a poignant Italianate Sinfonia for solo oboe with strings leading to a chorus which has become better known in its parodied version as the ‘Crucifixus’ of the B minor Mass.