Monteverdi Choir, Monteverdi Orchestra, Kati Debretzeni, Maya Homburger

Bach - Cantata 37 Wer da glaubet und getauft wird; Cantata 128 Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein; Concerto for two Violins, D-Minor; Cantata 43 Gott fahret auf mit Jauchzen

For nearly five decades Sir John Eliot Gardiner with his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra have been thrilling audiences with performances that marry freshness, clarity and a peerless vocal virtuosity. With a remarkable repertoire spanning eight centuries of western music from sacred music to opera, madrigals to oratorio, it is perhaps Bach that provides the constant, most famously in their extraordinary millennium pilgrimage project. Here in the first of two Bach programmes, Ascensiontide cantatas are wrapped around one of his best-loved instrumental works, the sublime double violin concerto.

‘If there were a Nobel prize for choirs, the Monteverdi Choir should be its laureate’ - Le Monde