Vox Luminis has teamed up with the Freiburger Barockorchester again, and together they celebrate music for Ascension Day. This topic inspired great composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, four of whose Ascension cantatas have been preserved.

The festive and colourful Cantata BWV 128 Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein was composed towards the end of Bach’s second year in Leipzig. The Ascension Oratorio BWV 11 was written for larger forces and ends with a triumphant chorus.

In the case of Georg Philipp Telemann, more than thirty cantatas for Ascension Day alone have survived. The cantata Ich fahre auf zu meinem Vater (“I ascend unto my Father”) was composed in 1721. The recording of this cantata is a world premiere.

The Thüringer Bachwochen festival is internationally renowned. More than 50 concerts are programmed and organised in various towns in the Land of Thuringia, where several generations of the Bach family have lived.

In 2024, it celebrates its 20th anniversary, just like Vox Luminis!

To mark the occasion, we will be in residence for three days: 28 March, 12 and 13 April 2024.

On 28 March, we will be performing Johann Sebastiani’s Matthäus Passion and Agostino Steffani’s Stabat Mater, two particularly remarkable works in the repertoire of sacred baroque music.

On 12 April, as part of our 20th anniversary celebrations to mark Easter, we will be performing an oratorio by Bach and a mass by Zelenka. It’s an original way of celebrating our 20th anniversary with two very special works.

Finally, on 13 April we’ll be working with composer Caroline Shaw (Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Awards). In the space of a week, she will compose a new work especially for Vox Luminis, based on Bach’s cantata BWV 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben.
A world premiere!

In 2004, a group of singers conceived the project to perform Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater. Twenty years later, the twenty-somethings of the time have emerged as a world-class vocal ensemble. And that deserves a celebration !

No more symbolic work to celebrate our birthday than Bach’s festive Osteroratorium from 1725. Four Biblical characters each highlight an aspect of Jesus’s miraculous resurrection in some of Bach’s finest arias. The celebration continues with Jan Dismas Zelenka’s 1726 Missa Paschalis, written for the prestigious Dresden court in which no fewer than four trumpets and timpani will thrill you.

Join the celebration on March 31 at the Concertgebouw in Bruges for the launch of our Et resurrexit anniversary tour. The tour concludes on 28 April at the Eglise Saint-Loup in Namur.

‘Kommt, eilet und laufet’!