Bach & MacMillan: Motets and Sacred Songs (Live)

This inspiring album frames James MacMillan’s Tenebrae Responsories with two of Bach’s motets for double choir, and interleaves its three movements with other works by both composers, including the world-premiere recording of MacMillan’s spellbinding I Saw Eternity the Other Night. Tenebrae’s singers caress Bach’s Komm, Jesu, komm, imploring rather than demanding the savior to end earthly suffering, and capture the world-changing heartache of Jesus’ betrayal in “Tradiderunt me” and “Jesum tradidit impius” from MacMillan’s Tenebrae Responsories. They carry their deep engagement with sacred words into exquisitely crafted interpretations of Bach’s Jesu, mein Freude, by turns meditative and dramatic, and MacMillan’s Miserere, with its haunting opening, shimmering echoes of Allegri’s famous setting of the same text, and luminous beauty of sound.