Johann Sebastian Bach: Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält

The music historical sensation now available on CD from Rondeau Production: Bach’s newly discovered chorale fantasia Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält.

‘Johann Sebastian Bach was not a late-starter’, the newspaper Die Welt titled its story on the sensational find of the chorale fantasia by Johann Sebastian Bach which had until then been thought lost. Music experts are stunned: the work alters the view of the composer’s early years. In March 2008, musicologists from Halle had bought a the papers of Wilhelm Rust (1822-1892), former cantor and organist at St Thomas, and found the valuable copy. The Bach-Archiv in Leipzig confirmed that the composition was, without any doubt, by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Ullrich Böhme, present organist at St Thomas, performs at the Bach-Organ of St Thomas’s Church Leipzig. He places the chorale Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält at the centre of this CD. In addition to the newly found organ fantasia, Bach had also written a cantata on this chorale, which is here festively performed by St Thomas’s Boys Choir and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. With Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach, Johann Hermann Schein, and Wilhelm Rust, works by further cantors and organists at St Thomas’s can be heard in this recording from St Thomas Leipzig.

Ullrich Böhme
Thomanerchor Leipzig
Gewandhausorchester
Susanne Krumbiegel
Martin Petzold
Matthias Weichert
Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller