Bach Cantata Academy, Weimar (August 2017)

I was lucky enough in August to travel to Weimar, Germany for a series of concerts with Helmuth Rilling, coached by Kathy Romey. As my first summer exploring Bach in detail, I feel like his style comes much more easily and I have found a true love for his music when it is done to its fullest. The hardest part was learning the articulatory precision that makes this man come alive. We would spend hours in rehearsal marking which phrases had eighth note cutoffs, which phrases demanded which sequence of staccato and connected singing. I have never in my life heard so many distinctions of separation (non-legato, marcato, portato, staccato, articulated legato, etc). As much as it was an education in style, it was an education in focus, attention to detail, and rehearsal efficiency.

The first four concerts were lecture concerts in the Stadtkirche in downtown Weimar. The examples were rehearsed in advance with unusual precision in their starting and stopping, and moreover Maestro often added and deleted right up until the lecture as he honed his ideas on how to present the cantata. Here is the first Gesprächkonzert of the festival of Cantata 63 "Christen, ätzet diesen Tag." 

The other Gesprächkonzert videos are of Cantata 65 "Sie werden aus Saba kommen"
Cantata 31 "Der Himmel Lacht", and Cantata 11 "Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen".

While preparing for the lecture concerts, we also gave a choral concert in the Erfurt-Dom, the gigantic cathedral in Erfurt, a nearby city that Bach visited during his lifetime. I had a solo in the Schütz "Der Herr ist mein Hirt." The piece begins at 26:46.

After all of this, singing at Bach's baptismal font and also his grave completed an experience that drives me to explore deeper his Passions and his other vocal works (which I will do in my Honors Scholar Thesis this academic year). This opportunity makes me appreciate these scholars who have popularized and preserved Bach's legacy in making him arguably the greatest composer who has ever lived. Here is our review (aber auf Deutsch) of our concert in Leipzig.

Concert of 3 Cantatas in front of Bach's Baptismal Font in the Georgenkirche Eisenach.