Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the Magnificat is one of his finest and most popular religious works. Its original version was written for Bach’s first Christmas at St Thomas’s church in Leipzig, in 1723. Ten years later, possibly for the feast of the Visitation on 2 July 1733, he revised the work, transposing it from E flat major to D major, removing four Christmas movements, and replacing recorders with flutes. The concert includes three mature festive cantatas that also use a large orchestra, including three trumpets and timpani.

The ‘Ascension Oratorio’ ‘Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen’, performed on 19 May 1735, is notable for its concerto-like first chorus and the aria ‘Ach, bleibe doch’, the first version of the Agnus Dei of the B minor Mass. The Whitsun cantata ‘O ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe’ begins with one of Bach’s greatest and most complex choruses, memorable for its vivid depiction of flickering flames. ‘Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren’, written for 19 August 1725, is a brilliant set of variations on Joachim Neander’s stirring chorale, known in the English-speaking world as ‘Praise to the Lord, the almighty, the king of creation’.