Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227 is one of the four motets Bach wrote for funeral services held in Leipzig. Yet anyone expecting unrelieved sorrow or plaintive despair in this composition would be mistaken. On the contrary — reflection on transience contains deep faith and the hope of soon meeting God. In a masterful polyphonic treatment of the text, in which successive stanzas of Johann Franck’s hymn intertwine with passages from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the main emphasis is placed on the liberation brought by Christ. Similarly, the motet closing the program, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf BWV 226, is maintained in a bright, luminous character. First performed by the two choirs of the St. Thomas School at the funeral of its rector — Johann Heinrich Ernesti — it perfectly reflects Lutheran confidence in an immediate meeting with God after death. Between the motets there will be astonishingly varied movements from selected cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Sinfonia from Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen BWV 12 delights with a warm, refined oboe solo, while the joyful Sinfonia from the cantata Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats BWV 42 dazzles with a dialogue between the orchestra and a group of solo instruments. Also to be heard is the chorus from the cantata Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten BWV 59, which — judging by its modest scoring and small scale — was composed for a university service. As a counterpoint to Johann Sebastian Bach’s works are Felix Mendelssohn’s Three Psalms op. 78. The nineteenth-century composer who brought about the first posthumous performance of the St Matthew Passion remained deeply impressed by the work of the Leipzig cantor and other Baroque and Renaissance masters. These fascinations influenced the shaping of his mature musical language, an interesting example of which are the psalms written in 1843–1844 for Lutheran liturgy at the Berlin Cathedral. Drawing on the tradition of responsorial and antiphonal chanting and the achievements of earlier masters of polyphony, Mendelssohn created original choral works in which the past resonates with what was contemporary to the composer.
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