Hans-Christoph Rademann and the Gaechinger Cantorey, with an excellent ensemble of soloists around Núria Rial, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Benedikt Kristjánsson and Matthias Winckhler, have once again selected works by probably Leipzig’s most famous Kantor of St Thomas’s Church: Johann Sebastian Bach.

This new recording features the cantatas BWV21 “Ich hatte viel Bekummernis” and BWV147 “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben”, two works whose origins lie in Bach’s Weimar period, but which Bach adapted and expanded for performances in Leipzig.

BWV21 “Ich hatte viel Bekummernis” is expressive also thanks to its unusual, almost – for Bach’s time – avant-garde opening chorus (“Ich, ich, ich, ich hatte viel Bekummernis”), which earned Bach some criticism at the time, and its splendidly jubilant final chorus, which forms a wonderful parenthesis with the opening chorus of BWV147.

Then there is BWV147 with the splendid presence of the chorale arrangement (“Jesus bleibet meine Freude”) – a source of earworms – concluding both parts of the cantata: this holds so much emotional power and impact that one simply could not, and certainly cannot, remain unmoved, either then or today.