After-hours Concert: The Master and the Apprentice – Buxtehude and the young Bach
Start your evening with the beautiful voices of HemiDemiSemi Consort, performing music by Johann Sebastian Bach and his greatest idol, Diderich Buxtehude!
Come straight from work, sink into the soft chairs of the Queen’s Hall, take a breath, and let four singers guide you into the world of early music. Experience beautiful, pure sounds that ease tense muscles and offer an hour of musical well-being.
About the concert
In 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach set off on a long journey from Arnstadt to Lübeck to visit the Danish composer and organist, Diderich Buxtehude, who was Bach's great idol. Buxtehude's music possessed a creative power and a technical mastery that Bach ardently desired to acquire, and their meeting became crucial for Bach's musical genius, which truly unfolded in the years that followed.
Bach's earliest cantatas "Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich" and "Der Herr denket an uns" both date from 1707, two years after his meeting with Buxtehude. At the time, Bach was working as an organist in Mühlhausen, composing cantatas to order for various occasions. The cantatas are characterized by the imaginative and changeable style of Buxtehude's and the 17th-century's, revealing Bach's youthful genius with agility and charm.
Buxtehude's selected three cantatas show his wide range of musical expression: the great cantata "Wo soll ich fliehen hin?" is contemplative and devoted, the ostinato cantata "Jesu, meines Lebens Leben" is strong and insistent, while "Alles was ihr tut" is fresh and outgoing. These were the sounds the very young Johann Sebastian Bach experienced in Lübeck!
About the ensemble
HemiDemiSemi Consort is a vocal ensemble based in Copenhagen, led by Jakob Bloch Jespersen. The ensemble specialises in vocal music from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The name HemiDemiSemi Consort is inspired by French and English musical terminology, in which “hemidemisemiquaver” refers to the smallest note value in the notation system. In Danish, this is called a sixty-fourth note.
Cast
HemiDemiSemi Consort is:
Marlene Metzger, soprano
Kristin Mulders, alto
Conny Thimander, tenor
Jakob Bloch Jespersen, bass and musical direction
