Philharmonia Baroque Performs Bach’s B-minor Mass
On Saturday evening, February 5, I attended Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorus performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Mass in B-minor in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. This was for Richard Egarr, the group’s new music director, his first go at the helm of Philharmonia Baroque in the work universally hailed as Bach’s magnum opus. Compiled in the last years of Bach’s life, The B-minor Mass includes music Bach wrote at different periods of his career. The Sanctus dates from 1724, the Kyrie and Gloria date from 1733, and only the Credo and Agnus Dei were written in 1748-49. Yet in spite of its seeming patchwork montage, the B-minor Mass is without doubt a well thought out work of monumental unity, Indeed, it is a veritable encyclopaedia of all Bach had mastered in his long and illustrious career as a composer. -more-
