BachFest 2023
As ticket sales for BachFest 2023 come up and the festival continues to approach, at Artful Journeys, we are getting excited about the music to come! From June 4th to June 19th of 2023 we will go to Eisenach and Leipzig to see Bach's birthplace and celebrate his music where he spent the latter part of his adult life.

The beautiful Wartburg Castle overlooks Eisenach, where we start our trip. Eisenach is known not only as J.S. Bach's birthplace in 1685 as the castle is where Luther translated the Bible into German in the 16th century, and Wagner was known to stay in the town for a while while he conceived of the opera Tannhaeuser in the 19th century.
Following Eisenach, we head to Leipzig, well known for St. Thomas Kirche where J.S. Bach was the music director from 1723 until his death in 1750. The boy's choir affiliated with the church, a well known staple in the choral world, is thought to have begun in 1212. We will hear concerts in the space where Bach conducted, Mozart played the organ and where Wagner was baptized. During Bach's 27 years in Leipzig, he wrote some of his most famous compositions (the passions and the Christmas Oratorio), re-introduced to audiences in the 19th century by Mendelssohn and now commonly played around the world.
What's exciting about this year at the Bach festival is that it marks the 300-year anniversary of Bach's life in Leipzig, the first Sunday after Trinity in 1723, also the first day of the festival this year. To mark this occasion, the festival will outdo itself from last year (a difficult task). The music we will hear throughout our ten days in Leipzig is world class. Andris Nelsons, Angela Hewitt, Lang Lang and Ton Koopman are on the list of performers scheduled to appear.
The festival will consist of virtually every cantata Bach wrote between 1723 and 1724. There is a four-part cycle in which some of the most famous Bach conductors in the world pick their favorite cantatas and explain to audiences what they enjoy so much about them. In addition, the St. John Passion will be performed as it was originally intended, as a Good Friday vespers service, so for those of us interested in historically informed performance, this experience will be like no other! The festival is also making up for a missed anniversary from 2021, the 300 year anniversary of the Brandenburg concertos, some of the most amazing music ever to be composed (in my opinion). These works will be performed by world-renowned experts marking the festival as some of the best Bach performance practice one can hear in our time.

As a sneak peak into the setting of many of these concerts to come, here is a video of Bach's Mass in b minor, an absolutely stunning piece of music. Happy listening!
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