BACH & MACMILLAN: MOTETS & SACRED SONGS
Recorded at Snape Maltings in 2023

Tenebrae bring their trademark passion and precision to this live performance of music by J. S. Bach and Sir James MacMillan, to be recorded live at Snape Maltings in May 2023. Renowned for their technical difficulty, Bach’s motets are pillars of the choral repertoire, requiring minute attention to detail as well as a full emotional range. Here, Tenebrae performs the three most well-known of the set, culminating in the joyful Singet dem Herrn. Like Bach, Sir James MacMillan has written much of his music for the church, and his settings of the Tenebrae responsories paint a vivid picture of the events of Holy Week. This album also features the premiere recording of I saw Eternity the other night, which MacMillan composed for Tenebrae in 2021 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the London Bach Society.

10/10“The vocal consort Tenebrae bring their trademark passion and precision to their performance recorded live at Snape Maltings…the sound quality is uniformly excellent…an illuminating and at times numinous listening experience” – Cross Rhythms

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Nigel Short understands the theatre inherent in MacMillan’s approach to setting his texts, and he has a firm grasp of narrative, unswervingly attentive to every finely honed nuance. There’s a laser-sharp focus to the choir’s tuttis, and the interjections that lacerate the sepulchral soft-grained opening of ‘Tenebrae factus est’ go to the heart of the Good Friday anguish." – Gramophone

Tenebrae
Nigel Short director