Johann Sebastian Bach: The Great Choral Cantatas

Georg Christoph Biller, cantor at St Thomas Leipzig, has made music history: as director of St Thomas’s Boys Choir Leipzig, which is renowned across the globe, he nurtured and continued Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical heritage for 22 years. These ten CDs present the 30 greatest and most inspiring of Bach’s choral cantatas, performed together with the Gewandhausorchester and exceptional soloists. The bonus CD features several exclusive recordings from St Thomas’s Church under the direction of Georg Christoph Biller, cantor at St Thomas emeritus; these are released here for the very first time.

Bach’s cantatas comprise roughly one-fifth of his overall oeuvre – alone 150 of the 190 sacred works in this genre appeared in his time as cantor at St Thomas Leipzig between 1723 and 1726. Thematically, the series is orientated to the liturgical year escorts the listener from the Advent season to Christmas and Epiphany, through to Lent, Easter, Ascension Day and Whitsun. Cantatas for the Trinity Sundays, the Marian festivities as well as the feast of St Michael and the Reformation feast determine the ecclesiastical year. The singers of St Thomas’s Boys Choir realise the solo parts for soprano and alto voices in the concerts recorded live by the Deutschlandradio Kultur and Rondeau production in St Thomas Leipzig. The Bach cantatas offer the listener a musical overview of the diversity of the genre that was obviously so close to the composer’s heart. The tradition of the weekly cantata concerts is being kept alive to this day by St Thomas’s Boys Choir.

The following recordings are published as part of the ten-CD series:
Cantatas for Advent BWV 36, 61, 62 (ROP4040)
Cantatas for Christmas BWV 63, 110, 190 (ROP4043)
Cantatas for Epiphany BWV 3, 65, 72 (ROP4038)
Cantatas for Passiontide BWV 22, 23, 182 (ROP4044)
Cantatas for Easter BWV 4, 31, 67 (ROP4045)
Cantatas for the Ascension BWV 37, 43, 128 (ROP4041)
Cantatas for Pentecost BWV 34, 74, 172 (ROP4026)
Cantatas for Trinity Sunday BWV 75, 194 (ROP4036)
Cantatas for Marian Feast BWV 1, 125, 147 (ROP4039)
Cantatas for Reformation/Michaelmas BWV 19, 50, 79, 80 (ROP4031)

Andreas Scheibner
Christoph Genz
Georg Streuber
Gotthold Schwarz
Martin Petzold
Matthias Weichert
Patrick Grahl
Reinhard Decker
Tobias Hunger
Sebastian Heindl (organ)
Thomasorganist Ullrich Böhme
Gewandhausorchester
Thomanerchor Leipzig
Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller

Bonus-CD:
Sächsischer Kammerchor
Fabian Enders (artistic director of the Sächsischer Kammerchor)
Mitteldeutsches Kammerorchester
Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller