St Thomas’s Boys Choir Leipzig: |Cantatas for Pentecost 7/10

The liturgical year with Johann Sebastian Bach: in celebration of the 800th anniversary of the Thomanerchor Leipzig (St Thomas’s Boys Choir Leipzig) Rondeau Production is publishing a ten-part CD series which presents a selection of cantatas for the liturgical year. In Leipzig, music for the liturgical year has an especially well kept tradition: up to the present day the Thomanerchor Leipzig (St Thomas’s Boys Choir Leipzig) and the Gewandhausorchester (Gewandhaus Orchestra) join forces each week in the performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas at the church of St Thomas. In time for the choir’s week of festivities, on 19 March 2012 Rondeau Production is publishing the CD with Pentecost cantatas. Three of Johann Sebastian Bach’s four cantatas for Whit Sunday, Erschallet, ihr Lieder BWV 172, Wer mich liebet der wird mein Wort halten BWV 74, and O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe BWV 34, are recorded on the most recent disc. The current cantor at St Thomas, Georg Christoph Biller, is fortunate to have boys from the choir’s own ranks performing the soprano and alto solos. He sets the three cantatas into context with hymns from Erhard Bodenschatz’s Florilegium selectissimorum Hymnorum.