Bach Festival in Leipzig

Leipzig lies at the heart of the classical music tradition: Wagner was born here, Mendelssohn died here and Bach spent nearly three decades as Kapellmeister at the Thomaskirche. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Leipzig plays host to a magnificent annual festival centred on Bach and the composers he inspired. 

“Bach liked to think in cycles,” explains Dr Michael Maul, the festival’s Dramaturg – and this intriguing and artistically rewarding concept provides the thematic impetus behind Bachfest 2018. Our tour revolves around one of these sequences, the innovative  ‘Cantata Ring’, which consists of the composer’s most impressive sacred cantatas presented by “the crème de la crème of Bach performers” including Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, and Leipzig’s Thomaner Choir with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. The playing of these celebrated ensembles will resound within the architecturally magnificent spaces of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche – where Bach originally directed his compositions – with each cantata carefully ordered according to its position in the liturgical year. 

This is once-in-a-lifetime musical experience is enhanced by cultural visits in and around Leipzig, including the city’s Bach Archive and Museum of Historical Instruments alongside excursions to Bach’s birthplace of Eisenach and the historically fascinating city of Dresden.

We stay in the centre of Leipzig at the four-star Victor’s Residenz Hotel. Please note that the festival programme is subject to change. 

Our Tour Director is musician and broadcaster Sandy Burnett, MA, who conducted a complete cycle of Bach’s surviving sacred cantatas over a thirteen-year period. He is very excited to be taking a group to experience such a unique sequence at the 2018 festival. Sandy writes: “Johann Sebastian Bach’s sacred cantatas are works with which I have a special affinity.  From 1997 to 2010 I masterminded a complete performing cycle of this amazing body of work at St Michael and All Angels in London’s Bedford Park.  For me this music has everything:  exquisite craftsmanship, dramatic power, great tunes – and of course a deep spirituality; Lutheran faith was at the very core of Bach’s identity. So the Bachfest’s Cantata Ring Cycle in 2018 is a brilliant idea:  hand-picking thirty of the greatest examples and arranging them in nine concerts which fit the progress of the church year, with performances at the Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche given by the greatest Bach performing ensembles around today. The prospect is quite simply mouthwatering…”