by Peter Feher
Apollo’s Fire resurrected its take on J.S. Bach’s Easter Oratorio over the weekend, returning to this choral masterpiece that the ensemble last presented almost two decades ago.
Performances of the Easter Oratorio don’t exactly abound every year, and the reason is less than straightforward. Staging the work is something of a production, approaching the monumental scale of similar Bach compositions — the Passions, the B-Minor Mass, the Christmas Oratorio — but nowhere near as imposing. This contrast has meant that a great piece of music has sometimes been treated as not quite great enough.
Which is a shame because the Easter Oratorio is one of Bach’s most consistently uplifting scores. [Read more…]
