For nearly two decades Bach Weekend has been a musical highlight of the year, not just for me but for all of the musicians involved alongside me. And this year’s programmes contain music that is very close to my heart.

When we play this wonderful repertoire, we exist in a strange world where we are simultaneously performing music and experiencing it too. Being swept away by the beauty of these works can distract us from our principal duty: To transmit the glory of the music to the audience.

I remember watching the comedian Jerry Seinfeld reminiscing with one of his fellow stars about their time working on Seinfeld’s groundbreaking show. They both wished that they had been able to enjoy themselves more while they were making the show. In the end, Seinfeld concluded that they were not there primarily to enjoy themselves, their job was to give joy to the audiences. So it is with us: we want to transport our listeners to the rich and beautiful world of Bach. If we can enjoy the glorious music ourselves along the way, then that is even better.

Our choral concert this year gives us an opportunity to collaborate once again with our sister group, the London Bach Singers. The programme features two of Bach’s most beautiful choral works, both composed in 1723. Bach’s compositional output that year, his first year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, was nothing short of miraculous. Apart from a complete cycle of cantatas Bach also wrote his Magnificat, the first of his settings of Latin texts.

The words of the Magnificat are those spoken by Mary on her visit to her cousin Elizabeth. Both were pregnant: Mary with Jesus, and Elizabeth with John the Baptist. In Bach’s time, the church feast commemorating that meeting, ‘Visitation’, would have been celebrated in July, but clearly the performance of Magnificat must have been delayed by Bach’s desire to compose a new cantata for every Sunday service in the year – an immense task. So Magnificat was eventually performed in December 1723, with some Christmas movements interpolated between the settings of Mary’s words.

Bach later revised the work, transposing it into D major and stripping out the Christmas interpolations. This final version of Magnificat has become one of Bach’s best-loved works and it is this piece that we will be performing. Driven by the visionary nature of its text, Magnificat is one of Bach’s most exuberant choral works. The glittering orchestration with trumpets and timpani perfectly conveys Mary’s radiant joy at her pregnancy and her desire to thank God for honouring her.

Cantata 46 ‘Look and see if any pain is like my pain’ has all the emotional explicitness of Magnificat, but rather than joy we have a devout acceptance of the anguish of suffering. The passionate opening chorus is one of Bach’s greatest creations and, like Magnificat, it is also coloured by a rich orchestration: this time the strings are augmented with a dark and sonorous combination of recorders, oboes da caccia and the extraordinary corno da tirarsi, or slide horn – an instrument only ever known to have been used three times, in all three cases by Bach. Although no cornos da tirarsi have survived from Bach’s time, there are drawings of the instrument and various clues about how it was constructed. Distinguished hornist Anneke Scott has been able to have a corno da tirarsi reconstructed and she will be playing it in this concert. You can read more about her research here.

Bach always used recorders masterfully – Actus tragicus and Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 are perhaps the most famous examples of this. But the recorder writing in Cantata 46 is probably the most emotionally ambitious in Bach’s music. Their rhapsodic and lyrical role in the mighty opening chorus is extraordinary. Here Bach casts aside the trope of the innocent, pastoral recorder and uses it as he would oboes or transverse flutes.

Speaking from a personal point of view, the repertoire we have chosen for Bach Weekend this year is nothing short of heaven for a recorder player. Alongside the two choral works, we will be playing Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. This work is famous for its soaring virtuoso trumpet part, but it also includes some of Bach’s most beautiful recorder and oboe writing, particularly in the sublime second movement.

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_{The Feinstein Ensemble performing the opening movement ‘Allegro’ (mvmt I) from JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G, BWV 1049}

Our opening concert features Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, a violin concerto in all but name, with the recorders playing the role of a backing group, albeit with occasional solos of their own. I have played this joyful work countless times alongside my good friend and colleague violinist Catherine Manson, but doing so always makes me happy.

Together with Brandenburg 4, we are playing orchestral suites by three masters. Bach’s own Orchestral Suite No. 1 is well known to concert audiences, as is Handel’s charming Water Music Suite No. 3 in G. Telemann’s magnificent Orchestral Suite in A minor might be slightly less familiar, but it is arguably the most important piece in the programme. Considered by many to be one of Telemann’s most accomplished orchestral works, it features a solo recorder part which demands feats of extraordinary virtuosity from the soloist. All recorder players enjoy the challenge of playing this piece, and of course I feel privileged to play it with my good friends and colleagues in the beautiful and clear acoustic of Hall One at Kings Place. I can’t wait to see you all there!

by Martin Feinstein

The 2025 edition of Martin Feinstein’s annual Bach Weekend will take place at Kings Place on 12 & 13 April.