The Gaechinger Cantorey are the ensembles of the International Bach Academy Stuttgart and unite top European musicians under the baton of academy director Hans-Christoph Rademann. Since the 2016/17 season, this name marks a new era for the already world-renowned ensembles of the Bach Academy, which for decades served as Bach ambassadors as the Bach Collegium Stuttgart and the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart under Helmuth Rilling. Now a newly founded baroque orchestra and the reformed choir combine to form a homogeneous original sound ensemble. The goal is to develop a new "Stuttgart Bach style" that will embody the hallmark of a Bach Academy of the future.
ST. JOHN'S PASSION
29 January 2023 @ 20:00
"The Gaechinger Cantorey is ... an experience. In the Great Hall there was a special highlight" wrote Marcus Stäbler in the Hamburger Abendblatt about the Elbphilharmonie debut a year ago: "The performers work magic, and the Great Hall works magic with them... Hans-Christoph Rademann models the mood changes of the [Nelson] Mass vividly and grippingly. With the 36 singers of his brightly awake choir, with whom he fans out a wide palette of dynamic shadings and finds enchanting colors again and again. With the no less strong orchestra of the Gaechinger Cantorey, which plays transparently and vividly on historical instruments."
Now the artists return with Johann Sebastian Bach's St. John Passion. First performed 299 years ago, it is still one of the most moving and at the same time most effective works in music history. The Gospel account of Christ's suffering and death is presented here in an extremely touching manner. Thus, the work is able to give comfort and confidence to engage us in a world that is still highly imperfect today, where violence and injustice continue to reign.
Programme
J.S. Bach St. John Passion BWV 245
Gaechinger Cantorey
Hans-Christoph Rademann, conductor
Miriam Feuersinger, soprano
Henriette Reinhold, alto
Patrick Grahl, tenor (arias)
Benedikt Kristjansson, tenor (Evangelist)
Matthias Winckhler, bass (Christ)
Tobias Berndt, bass (arias and Pilate)
Performers
GAECHINGER CANTOREY
Ensemble
With the decision to have its own baroque orchestra and a choir assembled according to practical performance criteria, the Bach Academy has embarked on a new path. The sound foundation and international unique selling point of this new path is the replica commissioned by the Bach Academy of an original chest organ discovered in 2013 in Seerhausen, Saxony, from the organ workshop of Bach's legendary contemporary Gottfried Silbermann, which embodies the ideal center of the newly formed ensembles as a true-to-the-original exhibit of baroque sound ideas.
The first, successful steps on the way to the new "Stuttgart Bach style" were performances by the ensembles in 2017 at the Musikfest Stuttgart, the Bachwoche Ansbach, the Festspiele Europäische Wochen Passau, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and six concerts as part of a U.S. tour in Fort Lauderdale, Chapel Hill, Norfolk, Princeton, Los Angeles and Irvine. In 2018, the musicians of the Gaechinger Cantorey have already been heard at the Dresden Kulturpalast, the Bachkirche Arnstadt and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. In May 2018, a six-concert tour took them to South America, and in June they successfully presented their sounding calling card at the Bach Festival Leipzig as participants in a prominent "Cantata Ring" (with Masaaki Suzuki, Ton Koopman and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, among others).
The debut CD of the newly formed Gaechinger Cantorey Erhalt uns, Herr, bei Deinem Wort with Reformation cantatas by J.S. Bach was released in May 2017 by the Stuttgart-based Carus publishing house. The critics were enthusiastic: "The Gaechinger Cantorey, with its new lineup and orientation, is right at the top in the concert of German baroque ensembles." (kulturradio des rbb)
Following the new recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which was released in October 2018, two further CD releases with the Gaechinger Cantorey and Hans-Christoph Rademann have come onto the market in April 2019: a programme with Bach cantatas (from the Stadtkirche St. Wenzel with the original Hildebrandt organ) on the accentus music label, and Handel's Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate on the Stuttgart-based Carus-Verlag label. A recording of the rarely performed fourth version of Bach's St. John Passion is planned for summer 2019 as part of the Bachwoche Ansbach.
Hans-Christoph Rademann
Conductor
The conductor is an immensely versatile artist with a broad repertoire who devotes himself with equal passion to the performance and rediscovery of early music as to the premiere and cultivation of new music. Born in Dresden and raised in the Ore Mountains (Schwarzenberg), he was influenced early on by the great Central German cantorial and musical tradition. He was a student at the traditional Kreuzgymnasium, a member of the famous Kreuzchor, which celebrated its eight-hundredth anniversary in 2016, and studied choral and orchestral conducting at the Dresden Musikhochschule.
During his studies, he founded the Dresdner Kammerchor and shaped it into a top international choir that remains under his direction today. An impressive testament to the quality of this artistic collaboration is the acclaimed recording of Heinrich Schütz's complete works with the Stuttgart-based Carus publishing house, which will be completed in 2018.
Hans-Christoph Rademann works with leading choirs and ensembles of the international concert scene. From 1999 to 2004 he was chief conductor of the NDR Choir and from 2007 to 2015 chief conductor of the RIAS Kammerchor. Regular guest conducting engagements have led and continue to lead him to the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Akademie für Alte Musik, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Concerto Köln, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, and others. Since June 2013, Hans-Christoph Rademann has been the academy director of the International Bach Academy Stuttgart.
Hans-Christoph Rademann has been awarded prizes and honors for his artistic work, including the Johann-Walter-Plakette of the Saxon Music Council (2014), the Saxon Constitutional Medal (2008), the Förderpreis and the Kunstpreis of the state capital Dresden (1994 and 2014, respectively). Several times he received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for his numerous CD recordings (most recently in 2016) as well as the Grand Prix du Disque (2002), the Diapason d'Or (2006 & 2011), the CHOC de l'année 2011, the Best Baroque Vocal Award 2014. He was also awarded the European Church Music Prize of the city of Schwäbisch Gmünd in 2016.
His recording of a danced production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion (choreography: Friederike Rademann) with the Gaechinger Cantorey, selected soloists and around one hundred students from the Stuttgart region and Minden, released on DVD by the Accentus Music label in October 2017, was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards 2018.
For his exemplary interpretation and recording of the complete works of Heinrich Schütz, Hans-Christoph Rademann received the newly endowed International Heinrich Schütz Prize in September 2018.
Hans-Christoph Rademann is professor of choral conducting at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden. He is also artistic director of the Musikfest Erzgebirge, ambassador of the Erzgebirge and patron of the Christian Hospice Service Dresden.
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