Bach’s St John Passon shows the composer’s towering imagination at its most intensely dramatic, moving and vivid. Christ’s trial and death are retold by soloists acting as participants in the event but also meditating upon it in reflective arias; the choir’s role alters from rowdy mob baying for crucifixion to that of a congregation singing quiet, redemptive chorales. Criticised in its day for being too operatic, the work is now revered for its originality, for its faith and above all for its incomparable beauty of musical thought. The new reading is a testament to the vitality of the choral tradition: all soloists are former or current members of New College Choir. It also presents a new level of authenticity, not only with period instruments but also with boys’ voices as Bach would have used at St Thomas in Leipzig.

Marking the 250th anniversary of the composer's death, John Eliot Gardiner's year-long Bach Pilgrimage continues with this program of cantatas for the Feast of the Purification of Mary. The music was written for performance on February 2 in the years 1724, 1725, and 1727, and the album preserves performances given on that same date in the year 2000 in Christchurch Priory, Dorset, England. The live sound has virtually no audience noise and is beautifully balanced, though a touch of harshness is present in the recording of countertenor Robin Tyson. The joy of God's new order in Christ is well expressed in Erfreute Zeit im neuen Bunde, a strong contrast to one of the most darkly beautiful of all Bach's sacred cantatas, Ich habe genug. Here the longing is for the death that will unite the singer with Christ, with bass Peter Harvey powerfully communicating all the required sorrow and passion. Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin combines choir with soloists, and intertwines joy, lament, and resignation in music performed with dignified grandeur. The disc ends with the only surviving movement of cantata BWV 200. —Gary S. Dalkin

"This young American harpsichordist ... tackling one of the pinnacles of keyboard music, has produced a masterpiece ... His calm, composed, and subtle approach to these dance suites is magnificently noble." — Le Monde This is Kenneth Weiss's first recording for Satirino Records, made in Paris in 1999 and released in 2001. It immediately established him as a foremost Bach interpreter. The harpsichord used for this recording is a magnificent instrument from the Anthony Sidey workshop, based on a mid-18th century German instrument from the Gottfried Silbermann workshop, built in Paris in 1995 by Anthony Sidey and Frédéric Bal and tuned during the recording by Anthony Sidey. The liner notes are written by French musicologist and Bach authority Gilles Cantagrel.