The final concert of this year’s Toronto Bach Festival took place at Eastminster United Church yesterday afternoon.  It offered two of the cantatas Bach wrote in Leipzig in 1723; Die Elenden sollen essen and Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes  Each is written in two parts which, originally would have bookended a sermon (mercifully absent yesterday).  Each begins with a choral setting of a biblical verse and proceeds via recits on arias on related texts.  The second half of each starts with a Sinfonia and finishes with a chorale based on a Lutheran hymn.

Eight singers were used; two to a part, with female sopranos and male altos.  The recits and arias are solos with all eight singers involved in the choruses and chorales.  There was a small but mighty period instrument band with the excellent Julia Wegman as Konzertmeister.  John Abberger conducted and played oboe.

In total there were 28 musical numbers and it was all really good so I think I’ll just mention a few highlights.  In the first piece I particularly enjoyed Sinéad White’s “Ich nehme mein Leben mit Freuden auf mich”.  There was some lovely, precise coloratura and a really interesting oboe obbligato.  Also Jonathon Adams in “Mein Herze glaubt und liebt”.  His rather lovely, very agile baritone got a fabulous trumpet accompaniment from Kathryn Aducci.

In the second piece Ellen McAteer sang a really nice “Hört, ihr Volker, Gottes Stimme” with beautiful tone accompanied by some excellent violin playing from Julia Wegman.  James Gilchrist showed great agility and style in “Hasse nur, hasse mich recht” and Daniel Taylor sang a meltingly beautiful “Liebt, ihr Christen, in der Tat!”, again with excellent oboe accompaniment.

Just because Adam Kulack, Cory Knight and Nicholas Burns didn’t make the highlights reel does mean they weren’t excellent.  They were.  Also a shout out to Christopher Bagan on keyboards.

It was the only concert of the festival I could fit into a crazy weekend but I’m most glad I went.