bach cycle concert dates

A Journey Through Endurance and Renewal

St James’s Chamber Orchestra’s Bach Cycle is more than a sequence of concerts: it is a journey through music’s power to endure, to renew, and to unite. Beginning with Bach’s chorales of defiance, tribulation, and thanksgiving — reimagined for our own time — and culminating in the grandeur of Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, the Cycle traces a thread of resilience that runs across centuries and traditions.

Along the way, it affirms the Orchestra’s humanitarian mission: to stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, to raise vital support for those most deeply affected by war, and to show how music can transcend boundaries of creed, nation, and history.

This journey is not only artistic but moral — a testament to the enduring human spirit and to music’s unique power to heal and bring hope. Through the Bach Cycle, we seek to harness that power both as a symbol of resilience and as a practical means of providing Ukrainian children harmed by war with the strength and resources to rebuild their lives.

Three Chorales of Resilience.

At the heart of the Bach Cycle stand three chorale-based works, each bearing centuries of history and expressing different facets of human endurance:

Defiance: Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4)
Tribulation: Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal (BWV 146)
Thanksgiving: Nun danket alle Gott

Defiance: Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4) 

Bach’s early cantata (1707) is founded entirely on the chorale Christ lag in Todesbanden. Luther’s 1524 text reworked the medieval Easter sequence Victimae paschalilaudes, itself reaching back to the 11th century and into plainchant. Every verse is a variation on this single melody — austere yet fiery, a thousand-year thread of defiance against death and affirmation of renewal.

Tribulation: Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal (BWV 146).

This cantata (1726) opens with an expansive Sinfonia adapted from a concerto, its vigour shadowed by the solemn truth of its text: “We must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God.” Here Bach confronts suffering head-on, acknowledging that the path to hope is one of struggle. The chorale movements embody patient endurance, while the brilliant instrumental writing recalls the sparkle of the Brandenburg Concertos, a marriage of light and shadow interwoven.

Thanksgiving: Nun danket alle Gott. 

This hymn of thanksgiving was written in 1636 by Martin Rinckart during the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and set to music by Johann Crüger in 1647. Bach’s harmonisations gave it clarity and dignity; Mendelssohn later magnified it into a radiant symphonic celebration in his Symphony No. 2. Across generations, this chorale has been sung as gratitude in the wake of suffering. A reminder that thanksgiving itself can be an act of resilience.

The Thread of a Thousand Years.

Together these works trace the cycle of human response to trial. Defiance, tribulation, and thanksgiving. They show how music, over a millennium, has given voice to suffering while carrying forward the will to endure and to hope. By reimagining them for orchestra today, St James’s Chamber Orchestra affirms that same resilience in our own time, in solidarity with all those harmed or displaced by conflict in Ukraine.