FULL Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme Cantata (Bach) Amsterdam 2018 Maria Keohane, Tim Mead, Daniel Johannsen, Matthew Brook
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme Cantata
- Composer: Bach Johann Sebastian
- Libretto:
- Venue & Opera Company: Walloon Church, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Recorded: February 11, 2018
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Maria Keohane, Tim Mead, Daniel Johannsen, Matthew Brook
- Conductor: Jos van Veldhoven
- Orchestra: Netherlands Bach Society
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Netherlands Bach Society
- Date Published: 2019
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
0:00 Wachet auf (Choral)
7:51 Er kommt (Rezitativ)
9:00 Wenn kömmst du (Duett)
15:19 Zion hört (Choral)
19:43 So geht herein (Rezitativ)
21:15 Mein Freund (Duett)
26:43 Gloria sei dir gesungen (Choral)
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (‘Awake, calls the voice to us’), BWV 140, also known as Sleepers Awake, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, regarded as one of his most mature and popular sacred cantatas. He composed the chorale cantata in Leipzig for the 27th Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 25 November 1731.
Bach composed this cantata to complete his second annual cycle of chorale cantatas, begun in 1724. The cantata is based on the hymn in three stanzas “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (1599) by Philipp Nicolai, which covers the prescribed reading for the Sunday, the parable of the Ten Virgins. The text and tune of the three stanzas of the hymn appears unchanged in three of seven movements (1, 4 and 7). An unknown author supplied additional poetry for the inner movements as sequences of recitative and duet, based on the love poetry of the Song of Songs. Bach structured the cantata in seven movements, setting the first stanza as a chorale fantasia, the second stanza in the central movement in the style of a chorale prelude, and the third stanza as a four-part chorale. He set the new texts as dramatic recitatives and love-duets, similar to contemporary opera. Bach scored the work for three vocal soloists (soprano, tenor and bass), a four-part choir and a Baroque instrumental ensemble consisting of a horn (to reinforce the soprano), two oboes, taille, violino piccolo, strings and basso continuo including bassoon.
Bach used the central movement of the cantata as the basis for the first of his Schübler Chorales, BWV 645. Bach scholar Alfred Dürr notes that the cantata is an expression of Christian mysticism in art, while William G. Whittaker calls it “a cantata without weaknesses, without a dull bar, technically, emotionally and spiritually of the highest order, its sheer perfection and its boundless imagination rouse one’s wonder time and time again”.