Like many music lovers, I don’t like to let Holy Week go by without hearing at least one Bach Passion. This year, though, I decided to choose something more cheerful and go instead to this concert of his rarely heard Easter Oratorio and two equally neglected Easter cantatas.
Well, it was an illuminating evening but not exactly the overwhelmingly joyous experience I had expected. One of the cantatas, Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, was remarkably sombre given its Eastertide subject matter; a meditation more on fear and grief than resurrection.
And even the oratorio (which is actually a slightly extended cantata) is three quarters about the suffering of Jesus’s mother and friends (cue a plaintive oboe solo, of course) and becomes
