Vivaldi Gloria and glorious Bach

The summer concert in our 90th Anniversary year features the music of Bach and Vivaldi.

Bach admired and was influenced by Vivaldi, transcribing several of the Venetian’s violin concertos for solo organ as well as emulating Vivaldi’s concerto style in his own instrumental concertos.

Our concert juxtaposes two celebratory works with a pair of more sober compositions. Bach’s cantata for Whitsunday 1742, O ewiges Feuer (BWV34), welcomes the Holy Spirit with appropriately rousing and jubilant music, while Vivaldi’s much-loved, extrovert Gloria in D is full of catchy melodies and optimism. These two jubilant pieces are complemented by Bach’s exquisite single-movement motet, O Jesu Christ, mein Lebens Licht (BWV118), composed in 1736–7, and his equally beautiful setting of Der Gerechte kommt um, a reworking of a Latin motet by his Leipzig predecessor, Johann Kuhnau.