A feast for Bach lovers! The fifth Brandenburg Concerto seems to have been the first concerto with a solo harpsichord part, and its captivating combination of delicate sonorities and scintillating virtuosity has made it one of his most popular works. Similarly, the cantata ‘Jauchzet Gott’ is one of Bach’s most popular cantatas, a virtuosic setting of a joyful text for solo soprano, trumpet, strings and continuo.

The other two works are equally fine but less known. The fourth orchestral suite in D major contains some of Bach’s most mature and sophisticated orchestral music, in which he revelled in the interplay between three oboes and bassoon and the strings. We perform it in the original version, without the later trumpet and timpani parts.

‘O angeheme Melodei’ (‘O pleasant melody’), a hymn to harmony, is Bach’s longest and finest secular solo cantata, scored for soprano, flute, oboe d’amore, strings and continuo. He used it several times in praise of various patrons ‘of Science and Art’, though it has only survived complete as a wedding cantata with a different, less appropriate text. Its original version has recently been reconstructed and published for the first time, and we believe that this performance will be the first ever in Britain.

Philippa Hyde needs no introduction to SVF audiences, having been a member of the regular team of performers for many years. She is one of the finest British sopranos active in the early music scene here and abroad, with her own group The Musicke Companye and with leading choirs and orchestras. Steven Devine is one of the most eminent harpsichordists of his generation and has appeared regularly at the Suffolk Villages Festival for many years. He plays a large two-manual harpsichord by Colin Booth (2000) after J.C. Fleischer (Hamburg, 1710).