Knabenchor Hannover: |Actus tragicus

Bach and his musical environment are at the heart of this CD with the Knabenchor Hannover. Its title, Actus tragicus, gives pride of place to the disc’s concept: the reception of the central Christian themes of death and salvation in the music of the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Together with the Himlische Cantorey and the Barockensemble L’Arco, the Knabenchor Hannover under the direction of Jörg Breiding presents a recording of specially selected cantatas and motets. The shift in perspective from mankind’s mortality to the Christian certainty of the redemption of sins and the promise of eternal life becomes strikingly apparent in the recorded choral works. The CD’s framework is set by Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit and Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, both of which were written in Bach’s time at Mühlhausen in 1707/08 and thus count among his earliest extant cantatas. The other works include the chorale motet Unser Leben ist ein Schatten by Johann Bach—Johann Sebastian’s great-uncle—as well as the motet Unsere Trübsal, die zeitlich und leicht ist by Johann Ludwig Bach. The latter was one of Bach’s remote nephews. Johann Ludwig Bach was active as Kapellmeister of the Hofkapelle in the Thuringian town of Meiningen.