Coming up on Sunday 6 August is the next concert from the Oxford Bach Soloists – Actus Tragicus – a fascinating concert exploring the music by some of the greatest composers of the baroque age.
Bach’s Cantata Gottes Zeit ist die Allerbeste Zeit (God’s time is the very best time), also known as Actus Tragicus was written when he was twenty-two. It is a work of incredible genius such as even great masters have seldom achieved, and belongs to the great musical literature of the world. Featuring an unusual scoring of two viola da gamba and two recorders, this is one of Bach’s most profoundly beautiful of all cantatas.
Bach – Postage Stamp
Dieterich Buxtehude – Postage Stamp
Telemann – Postage Stamp
This concert showcases viola da gamba, recorder and harpsichord through instrumental music by JS Bach himself and his contemporary Georg Philipp Telemann whose 250th anniversary we mark this year. In addition, Dietrich Buxtehude’s extraordinary funeral music Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin (In peace and joy I now depart) is more of a celebration of the life – rather than a mourning of the loss – of his father in 1674.
Actus Tragicus
New College Chapel
Holywell Street Oxford, OX1 3BN
6 August at 3.15pm
PROGRAMME
JS Bach Sonata for Viola da gamba and Harpsichord in D, BWV 1028
Telemann Concerto for Viola da gamba and Recorder, TWV 52:a1
Buxtehude Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BuxWV 76
JS Bach Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 (Actus Tragicus)
