Genève 5

This recording was made in April 2019 at the Ernest-Ansermet Studio in Geneva, after five concerts in Switzerland during the preceding days. The desire to be as faithful as possible to the rhythm of the drama of the Passion and to the evidence of the musical sequences, which is easier to feel during a live performance than in front of the relative abstraction of the microphones, as well as a non-negligible time constraint (three and a half days in the studio for a work of 160 minutes), pushed us to record long takes, sometimes including up to 10 or 12 minutes of music, thus getting as close as possible to the feeling of a concert.

The Mass in B minor holds a very special place in J.S. Bach’s output: a work of grandeur, an opus ultimum, it was not composed as such but is the result of an assembly of pieces written at different times and for different circumstances. Bach worked on it during the years 1748-1749, until his eyesight, which had gradually deteriorated, was completely lost - a letter of recommendation for his son Johann Christoph Friedrich, dated 17 December 1749, was written by Anna Magdalena, who imitated his signature. It was rumoured in Leipzig that the cantor’s health had deteriorated to such an extent that the city council, on the orders of the all-powerful minister of Saxony, auditioned a conductor from Dresden on 8 June 1749, who had been recommended to him for “the future post of cantor of St. Thomas if the director musices Sebastian Bach should pass away”. By this time Bach was working on his Mass, which was larger than anything that had ever been conceived before[1]. His rather pale successor had to wait another year to replace him, Bach having died on 28 July 1750.

According to the obituary written by his son Carl Philip Emmanuel and his former pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola, Johann Sebastian Bach composed five Passions, including “one for two choirs” (the St Matthew Passion).

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