The chief attraction of this collegiate recording is that it highlights a rather rare item in the Bach canon: the 1725 version of the Johannespassion, or St. John Passion. In a nutshell, Bach, after a year of working on a giant cantata cycle full of chorales as cantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, added chorales to the St. John Passion he had composed the year before. The changes begin with the opening chorus: the festive "Herr, unser Herrscher, wie herrlich ist dein Ruhm in allen Landen" (Lord, our master, how magnficent ...
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The chief attraction of this collegiate recording is that it highlights a rather rare item in the Bach canon: the 1725 version of the Johannespassion, or St. John Passion. In a nutshell, Bach, after a year of working on a giant cantata cycle full of chorales as cantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, added chorales to the St. John Passion he had composed the year before. The changes begin with the opening chorus: the festive "Herr, unser Herrscher, wie herrlich ist dein Ruhm in allen Landen" (Lord, our master, how magnficent is thy glory in all lands) is replaced by the motet-like "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünder groß" (Human, weep at your great sins). Elsewhere, Bach's sequence of recitatives enacting the biblical drama and arias reflecting upon it is interspersed with plain congregational chorale settings. One can see why the earlier version is more popular: this one makes the chorus fulfill the dual roles of the crowd demanding Christ's crucifixion and the German congregation praying about those events....
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