Bach Oratorio

This, the second release of the highly anticipated Retrospect Ensemble series, features the Easter Oratorio, one of Bach's best-known oratorios and a monumental work, as well as the Ascension Oratorio. Retrospect Ensemble employs large-scale forces for this recording including four-part choir and orchestra (including timpani). This dynamic recording highlights the skill and brilliance of Bach's writing through the inspired story telling of its star soloists and the passion of the Ensemble.

After the completion of the magisterial touring sequence of Bach cantatas from conductor John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, it seems that the prolific music-making will continue with non-cantata works. This strong recording of Bach's Easter Oratorio, BWV 249, was released just in time for the 2014 Easter holiday and should find the same demand as the rest of Gardiner's output. The Easter Oratorio is more an oversized cantata than a full-scale treatment with narrator, chorus, and soloists in the manner of Bach's other large religious works; it has no narrating Evangelist, consists mostly of solos in dialogue with each other, and apparently was actually adapted from an earlier pastoral birthday cantata.

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, one of the four best-known sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, has gone down in history as the “Bückeburg Bach.” During his years at the court of Count Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-Lippe in Bückeburg he produced a remarkable body of sacred and secular works, including piano concertos, symphonies, cantatas, oratorios, and Passion settings.