This concert brings together four great vocal concertos or cantatas written during 1714, the momentous year when Bach was made Konzertmeister. The concert also includes the lively short motet ‘Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden’, possibly written by Bach at this period.

In this concert serious songs and instrumental pieces by the Austrian court composer Heinrich Isaac (d. 1517) and his pupil Ludwig Senfi (c. 1486-1542/3) are contrasted with settings of popular music, including haunting folksongs. Also included is Isaac’s famous song ‘Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen’, the melody of which became a Lutheran chorale and was set by many composers, including Bach and Brahms.

Baroque Dresden was famous for its architecture and the visual arts, but it was also important for music. Court composers such as Johann David Heinichen, Johann Dismass Zelenka and Johann Georg Pisendel looked to Italy for their musical style, and in particular to Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote a number of works for Dresden.

A pre-concert talk by Professor Anthony King, University of Essex

This concert is an evocation in words and music of the rich cultural life at Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great of Prussia. It features music by Frederick himself, his accompanist C.P.E.Bach, and other Berlin court composers.

The songs in this concert are chosen from those by Schubert, Weber and Louis Spohr published around 1800 with guitar parts, presumably with the composers’ approval. David Miller also plays guitar solos by Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856), a Hungarian guitar virtuoso active in Vienna.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), J.S. Bach’s second son, composed twenty-one settings of the Passion for performance during Lent in Hamburg. Nearly all of them were believed to have been destroyed during World War II until the manuscripts were rediscovered in Kiev in 1999. The 1769 St Matthew Passion is the first and most elaborate of the series. We believe that this fine work has never been performed in Britain, so this concert should be a notable occasion, not to be missed.