08.04.2022

JEREMY OVENDEN mit Bachs h-Moll-Messe in Madrid und Cuenca

Under the direction of David Afkham and together with the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España, Jeremy Ovenden performs the tenor part in Bach's Mass in B minor at the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid and as part of the Semana Santa de Cuenca.

There are many works by Bach that vie for the honour of constituting his musical testament. Among the most renowned are (in order of composition) The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, The Art of the Fugue and the Musical Offering, all of them true compendiums of his mastery of contrapuntal music. There are indications, however, that Bach devoted his last energies to revising his Mass in B minor, instead of the traditionally credited The Art of the Fugue. This anecdote would lend additional value to this monumental work, which has never been performed during the composer's lifetime and of which Bach could not have harboured any hope that it would be performed posthumously, given that its doctrinal content does not fit in with either the Catholic or Lutheran liturgy. The added circumstance that the composition of the Mass had begun much earlier - in 1733 - and that, in the course of its lengthy and complex creative process, he incorporated and adapted vocal works composed in very different circumstances and for very different purposes, also makes it something like the work of a lifetime, an exceptional synthesis of the choral style and the rhetorical values of an era that was drawing to a close.

Cast

Robin Johannsen, soprano
Sophie Harmsen, alto
Jeremy Ovenden, tenor
Konstantin Wolff, bass

David Afkham, conductor
Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de Espana