Bach Festival 2023: Classical music goes cosmic

For 38-year-old composer Johann Sebastian Bach, his 1723 appointment as musical director (Thomaskantor) in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig must have seemed like a huge step. What Bach could not know is that, three centuries later, his music would reach beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Almost exactly 300 years since he started working in the city, Leipzig is celebrating the composer with their annual Bach Festival. The 2023 festival opened with "Earth Chaconne" — a 15-minute film from the  astronauts of the International Space Station showing a spectacular view of the Earth, played along with the famous Chaconne from Bach's Partita for Violin No. 2 in D minor.

Bach in Leipzig: the greatest of all time?

Bach worked in Leipzig for the last 27 years of his life. During this time, he composed works that remain some of the most influential and important of all time — including the Passions, the B minor Mass, the "Art of the Fugue" and also the great cantata cycles that are the focus of this year's Bach Festival, or Bachfest.

"This Bachfest is special because everything is under the banner of this anniversary," Michael Maul, director of the Bachfest Leipzig, told DW. "'Bach for Future' is the motto we came up with because we wanted to show not only that we are looking to the future, but because we want to make it clear that the works Bach composed here in Leipzig back then, 300 years ago, are actually so strong that they are still 'for future' today."

The ambitious composer astonished his contemporaries with his first cantata cycle. Over the course of a year, he transformed traditional musical forms many times over and creatively developed the genre of church cantata. And in this time he was extremely prolific: He composed a new work for performance every single Sunday.

"Bach is just number one," Dutch conductor and Bach expert Ton Koopman explained at the Bachfest's opening press conference. "If there is such a thing in heaven as a regulars' table of the greatest composers of all time, at which Mozart, Wagner, Verdi and all the others also sit, the colleagues have certainly chosen Bach as 'chairman,'" Koopman, himself a living Bach legend, added in a DW interview.

Alongside Philippe Herreweghe and other stars of the scene, Koopmann will present his favorite cantatas at the Bach Festival.

Opening concert: A call for peace

When asked about the relevance of the Bach for Future motto, festival director Michael Maul explained: "Bach's music will be presented in new contexts. With outstanding debutants, fresh formats and many a surprising adaptation and reinterpretation of familiar works."

A commitment to Bach's visions of the future was already made at the opening concert in St. Thomas Church. Bach's cantata "Die Elenden sollen essen" ("The Wretched Shall Eat"), with which choirmaster Bach introduced himself to the people of Leipzig on the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday in 1723, was performed here once more.

To complement it, a new work was commissioned for performance in the St. Thomas Church: In his cantata for soloists, choir, organ and orchestra, contemporary composer Jörg Widmann takes the baroque form of the cantata and gives it new spirit.

"Bach was extremely contemporary in his works and also radically topical," Widmann told DW. "In his inaugural cantata, 'Die Elenden sollen essen,' he takes up one of the most topical themes of his time — grave poverty. And so I, too, have chosen a theme that cannot be bypassed today — war."

Widmann begins with the famous 18th-century anti-war song, "Es ist Krieg!" ("It is war!") by Matthias Claudius, and weaves an intense text-music work into the 20th century, with the powerful final words of the famous Hitler-opponent Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written shortly before the theologian's execution by the Nazis: "This is the end — for me, the beginning of life."

 For Widmann, this confidence is not a reason to do nothing, but quite the opposite.

"It may sound naïve, but I firmly believe that we can and must use music to help stop the disaster into which our world is sinking," Widmann explained. "Bach saw it no differently in his time and would see it the same way today, I'm sure."

A star-studded lineup under brilliant summer skies

The program features nearly five dozen concerts and other events over 11 festival days, June 8-18, at more than 20 venues across the city.

But if that is still not enough, Bach fans can also head to Leipzig's handsome marketplace. Under a bright summer sky, and with free admission, young and experienced Bach musicians from all over — from violin virtuoso Daniel Hope and star pianist Lang Lang to the heavy metal band "Son of a Bach" — will perform throughout the festival.

Lang Lang told the audience his appearance in Leipzig was a "dream come true." He said he had never felt so close to the greatest genius of music as here, in Leipzig.

Lang Lang enchanted the audience with fragments of the famous Goldberg Variations, played with a depth and intimacy that could hardly be surpassed.

Bach is a composer who speaks directly to the heart, from the past to the present — and the future.  

DW is a media partner of the Bach Festival Leipzig.

This article was adapted from German.