Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Semyon Bychkov

For this Czech Philharmonic excursion into pre-Classical repertoire, Chief Conductor Semyon Bychkov tackles one of the supreme works of the Baroque era: Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Mass in B minor.

To this day, there is no proof of why the Protestant composer wrote a mass in 1733 using the Catholic rite and one which would be difficult to employ in liturgical practice. According to popular legend, it was Dresden’s Catholic court which commissioned Bach to write a mass, but new discoveries in correspondence from the time now point towards Vienna and the patronage of the Bohemian Count Johann Adam von Questenberg. It is now believed that von Questenberg, Bach’s contemporary and a great admirer of his, probably commissioned the work for a Solemn Mass held for the Feast of Saint Cecilia by a musical fraternity in Vienna known as the “Musicalische Congregation”.

Today the work is deservedly celebrated as a perfect synthesis of all the baroque master’s compositional techniques and procedures.