Here is the most ambitious composition left by Johann Ludwig Bach, known as ‘the Meiningen Bach’, who belonged to a branch of the family separated from Johann Sebastian’s since the 16th century. Its genesis was rather unusual: Johann Ludwig composed his cantatas to texts by his patron, Duke Ernst Ludwig, and was therefore commissioned to set the poem which the duke had written for his own funeral, in November 1724. Five years before St Matthew Passion, this score already requires two choirs and a large array of instruments, and must have utilised every musician in the court Kapelle.

Since the 2007-08 season, Hans-Christoph Rademann has been chief conductor of the RIAS Kammerchor. He grew up in a family of Kantors, and during his training as a choral and orchestral conductor at the Musikhochschule in Dresden he founded the Dresdner Kammerchor, with which he made a reputation both in Germany and abroad, and which he still directs today.