The heavens are telling | Oxford Bach Soloists

Keen to impress the congregations in Leipzig, Bach’s first cantatas in his new role set the bar extraordinarily high. Both Cantata 75 (for Whit Sunday) and Cantata 76 are written on a great scale consisting of 14 movements, in two parts divided by the sermon, and display magnificent choruses.

Cantata 24 was written and performed two weeks later, and Cantata 147 on the Feast of the Visitation of Mary featuring two identical pastoral chorales, famously known in the English-speaking world as Jesu, joy of man’s desiring.