Trauerkantaten

In this programme, Reinoud Van Mechelen and a nocte temporis return to their first musical love: the world of Johann Sebastian Bach. Centred on themes of farewell, mortality and redemption, the ensemble presents three of the most moving cantatas ever written on this subject.

In the Actus Tragicus, the young Bach captures with astonishing depth the paradox of human existence: our mortality as a gateway to hope and salvation. Some twenty years later, he composed the funeral ode Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl, using an expressive palette of colours - two traversos, two oboes, strings and an expanded continuo - to heighten the emotional intensity of the work.

The cantata Du aber, Daniel, gehe hin by Georg Philipp Telemann is often linked to the Actus Tragicus because of its thematic depth. Here too, the fragility of life and the human search for meaning take centre stage.

This programme guides the listener through suffering towards a place where sorrow transforms into consolation and beauty.