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Live at the Â鶹Éç Proms: The Bach Collegium Japan with conductor Masaaki Suzuki and star soloists.

Presented by Hannah French, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

7.30pm
Johann Sebastian Bach: St John Passion

c. 8.20pm
INTERVAL During the interval, Joseph McHardy, harpsichordist, conductor and researcher talks to Hannah French about the musical and cultural background to Bach's St John Passion. What might the soloists, choristers, instrumentalists and the listeners in the Lutheran congregation itself have made of Bach's often theatrical music at the work's first performance in Leipzig on Good Friday, 1724?

Benjamin Bruns (Evangelist)
Christian Immler (Jesus/bass)
Yusuke Watanabe (Pilate)
Carolyn Sampson (soprano)
Alexander Chance (counter-tenor)
Shimon Yoshida (tenor)
Bach Collegium Japan
Masaaki Suzuki (conductor)

Nobody does Bach quite like the Bach Collegium Japan. The ensemble makes a welcome return to the Proms for the composer’s concentrated depiction of Christ’s arrest, rendition and execution – the St John Passion. Probing, unsettling, dramatic and beautiful, Bach’s work is known as much for its optimism as for its turbulence, its final bars appearing to invite all of us to imagine a brighter future. Specialist soloists led by Benjamin Bruns, Christian Immler and Carolyn Sampson join Masaaki Suzuki and his ensemble for a performance of Bach’s masterpiece marking three centuries since it was written.