Tag Archives: Trinity 10

Almost Unbearable, It’s that Good: Hannes Rux-Brachtendorf and Matthias Winckhler in BWV 46 on Rademann’s Vision Bach, Volume 3.

08 Saturday Aug 2026

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Oh, how I wish I could have been there in person, in July 2023! At the Schlosskirche (Palace Church) of the Ludwigsburg Palace in Germany, looking up at this ceiling painting by Carlo Carlone, and hearing Bach’s incredible cantatas 105 and 46 performed by the Gaechinger Cantorey under the direction of Hans-Christoph Rademann.

Alas, that summer I had other things on my mind, and was pretty late catching on to Rademann’s Vision Bach, a project to record all Bach’s cantatas from his first year in Leipzig (1723/1724), in the order in which Bach wrote them. So I missed most of those live concerts, but I managed to attend one in February 2024, went to this ensemble’s St. Matthew Passion in Hamburg in March 2025, and became a fan. This June, I had the great fortune to hear two of their performances at Bachfest Leipzig. There, everyone’s energy, but especially the quality of the orchestra blew me away. I was not alone in this, festival director Michael Maul complimented the orchestra too the next day during the talkshow he co-hosted.

Hans-Christoph Rademann, photo by Marco Borggreve

Rademann took over the Bach Akademie Stuttgart and the Gaechinger Cantorey from Helmut Rilling in 2013, and immediately replaced the orchestra with a period instrument ensemble. During the first three years, this happened through collaborations with Freiburger Barockorchester and Akademie Alte Musik Berlin. In 2016 Rademann founded the Bach Akademie Stuttgart’s own orchestra, also under the name Gaechinger Cantorey. And I feel you can tell that this orchestra is only 10 years young.

All 10 Volumes of Vision Bach are out now. Please scroll down on this website by Bachakademie Stuttgart to order directly from the publisher if you are in the European Union. Or visit this website, with links to order from Amazon if you are in the USA, and links for YouTube. I hope to discuss more of these Vision Bach recordings over the coming weeks and months.

For this Sunday, the 10th after Trinity, Bach wrote Cantata 46, Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz sei in 1723. It appears on Vision Bach, Volume 3. You can purchase this on Amazon or Arkiv Music if you are in the USA, or on jpc if you are in Europe. Please consider purchasing, to support the artists! Also available on Spotify and YouTube.

Find the score here, and the German text with English translations here.

The recording of Cantata 46 features gorgeous singing by alto Elvira Bill and tenor Benedikt Kristjánsson, and the beautiful sound of Anneke Scott’s corno da tirarsi* in the opening chorus and closing chorale. But the absolute best is the bass aria.

Hannes Rux-Brachtendorf
Matthias Winckhler

We all know Bach’s illustration of thunder and lightning from his St. Matthew Passion, but he does it very well too in this apocalyptic bass aria. And this performance by Baroque trumpet player Hannes Rux-Brachtendorf and bass Matthias Winckhler (yes, that’s really five consonants in a row in the middle of his last name) is unrivaled. Especially how together they illustrate the word “unerträglich” (unbearable) in the third line of the text, it is indeed almost unbearable, it is that good! I have never heard those harmonic crunches so well done on any other recording.

Dein Wetter zog sich auf von weiten,
Doch dessen Strahl bricht endlich ein
Und muss dir unerträglich sein,
Da überhäufte Sünden
Der Rache Blitz entzünden
Und dir den Untergang bereiten.

Your tempest brewed from afar,
Yet at long last its flash breaks forth
And must be unbearable to you,
As heaped-up sins
Set aflame the lightning of vengeance
And bring about your downfall.**

Hannes Rux-Brachtendorf plays with fabulous technique and gorgeous phrasing. His playing was impressive too during Bachfest Leipzig in Cantata 51 Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen. And Matthias Winckhler — ahhhhh, he has it all, the beautiful voice, the colors, the core in the sound. And he can do it all, sing all the notes, do the colloraturas, tell the story, AND move me. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, because I observe a growing number of Lied and opera engagements on his calendar, so we might hear him less often in Bach cantatas.

Anneke Scott with corno da tirarasi* in the Palace church in Ludwigsburg – photo by Holger Schneider.

When listening to this Volume 3 of Vision Bach, don’t miss the cantata this album opens with: Cantata 105 Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht for the ninth Sunday after Trinity (last week). Find the text for that cantata here. The recording features gorgeous singing by the one and only Miriam Feuersinger in the soprano aria “Wie zittern und wanken;” a five star performance by horn player Anneke Scott (again on corno da tirarsi*) and tenor Benedikt Kristjánsson in “Kann ich nur Jesum mir zum Freunde machen;” and last but not least, Matthias Winckhler in the arioso “Wohl aber dem, der seinen Bürgen weiss.” This movement always makes me think of the “Am abend da es kühle war” arioso from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and it moves me to tears.

Wieneke Gorter, © 2026.

*For more information on Anneke Scott and the corno da tirarsi, please read my blog post from 2023 here.

**English translation by Michael Marissen & Daniel R. Melamed, from https://bachcantatatexts.org/

Bach’s version of Jeremiah’s Lament

11 Friday Aug 2023

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1630. Oil on panel. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Click here for more information about this painting.

Continuing with Bach’s 1723 cantata cycle, next up is Cantata 46 Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei, written for the 10th Sunday after Trinity (August 1st in 1723). 

My favorite recording of this cantata is still the one by Herreweghe from 2012, which you can find here on YouTube via a playlist I created. However if you’d like to see all the special instruments in action, I highly recommend the J.S. Bach Foundation’s live video registration, with a tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet) and recorders* in the opening chorus, a Baroque trumpet in the bass aria, and an oboe da caccia (hunting oboe, also new for Bach in Leipzig) as well as the recorders in the alto aria.

Please find the text here, and the score here.

Scholars agree that last week’s Cantata 105 and this week’s Cantata 46 Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei, can be seen as a pair within Bach’s works from that first summer in Leipzig. Here’s why: 

  1. The stunning opening choruses of these two cantatas are both written as if they were a Prelude and Fugue for organ. Bach would later use the Prelude part of Cantata 46’s opening chorus as the Qui tollis for his Mass in B Minor.
  2. Both cantatas contain a “floating aria.” With this I mean an aria without the usual fundament of a basso continuo (organ or harpsichord and cello), of which Bach’s most famous exemple is the Aus Liebe aria from his St. Matthew Passion. Bach included such an aria for the first time in last week’s Cantata 105 (the soprano aria Wir zittern und wanken) and one appears again in this week’s Cantata 46 (the alto aria Doch Jesus will auch bei der Strafe).
  3. Bach uses a da tirarsi brass instrument in both: a corno da tirarsi in 105 and a tromba da tirarsi in 46 (read last week’s post for more information about these).

I have written about some of these aspects of Cantata 46 before, but I never really paid much attention to the text. I needed Karl Graf, the theologian participating in the lecture about this cantata by the J.S. Bach Foundation**, to point out that the text of this cantata refers to two destructions of Jerusalem, in 586 BC by the Babylonians, and in 70 AD by the Romans. 

Jeremiah the Prophet laments the 586 BC massacre in his Lamentations of Jermiah, a collection of poetry from the Old Testament, from which Bach’s librettist takes the words for the opening chorus.

Jesus predicts the destruction by the Romans in 70 AD, and weeps about it, in Luke 19: 41-48, which was the official reading for this 10th Sunday after Trinity in Bach’s church. Bach and his librettist mix the two parts of the Bible, because in their minds it is all the same, history unfortunately repeats itself. The bass aria paints one of the most dramatic pictures ever in a Bach cantata, and the text of the alto recitative warns that Leipzig could be next! Fortunately, as usual in a Bach cantata, there’s the promise of salvation, and a lightening of the mood in the music as well, this time in the form of the pastoral alto aria.

Throughout the Renaissance and Baroque, Catholic and Anglican composers have set the Lamentations of Jeremiah to music for the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. A notable example are those by Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bach’s colleague at the Catholic court in nearby Dresden. Zelenka wrote his Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet for Holy Week in 1722, so roughly 1,5 years before Bach wrote his Cantata 46. While Bach and Zelenka knew each other and Bach had friends in the Dresden court orchestra, I truly don’t know if Bach was aware of Zelenka’s setting of the Lamentations prior to August 1st 1723. There are some interesting similarities between the compositions, for example Zelenka also opting for a pastoral scene towards the end, but that’s food for another blog post! For now I just like to think that Bach wrote his own Lutheran version of the Lamentations with this Cantata 46. 

Wieneke Gorter, August 11, 2023.

*It is the first time Bach uses recorders in Leipzig, but it is an instrument he often uses to portray sorrow.

**If you understand German or don’t mind automatically generated subtitles on YouTube, you can watch the extremely informative lecture about Cantata 46 here. It doesn’t just feature Rudolf Lutz and Karl Graf, but also Bach Scholar Michael Maul from the Bach-Archiv Leipzig.