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J. S. Bach's last completed vocal work reveals the overwhelming wealth of his creativity and compositional skills. Composed during Bach's time as cantor at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, it's heard here in the composer's domain as the crowning glory of the 2013 Leipzig Bach Festival. Georg Christoph Biller leads the St. Thomas Boys Choir, an outstanding quintet of soloists, and the prestigious Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, playing on authentic period instruments.

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Product Description The renowned St. Thomas Boys Choir of Leipzig, which boasts J. S. Bach as a former cantor, celebrates its 800th anniversary with an extraordinary interpretation of the St. Matthew Passion. The Guardian praised how the harmonic lines interwove with a transcendence that can only be achieved through living, eating and working together. This Accentus Music production is the only audio-visual release of Bachs St. Matthew Passion, performed by the choir for which it was written, in St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, where the composer worked and is buried. Review Conductors who wish to become adept in performing the later sacred works of Bach would do well to study this video, as the manner in which Georg Christoph Biller deals with accompanied recitative is about as practical as it gets. --John Guarente, Choral Journal

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Memorial Concert for Claudio Abbado It was a deeply affecting and appropriate farewell. The spirit of Claudio Abbado, the great conductor and founder of orchestras who died in January 2014, was present in music, words, and silence. Thousands upon thousands came to the Basilica di Santo Stefano in Bologna and the Piazza della Scala in Milan to pay their last respects. In Lucerne, the members of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA paid tribute to this extraordinary man and friend with a deeply moving concert - "The emotional intensity was unbelievable; this could only be achieved by true musicians, by those capable of love." (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) Friends and associates look back fondly on Claudio Abbado and speak of how they experienced these moments of grief and farewell. Andris Nelsons, LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA Isabelle Faust, violin Bruno Ganz / Excerpt from Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 3, Eroica Claudio Abbado, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, August 2013 / Franz Schubert Symphony No. 7 in B minor "Unfinished", Allegro moderato / Friedrich Hölderlin Brot und Wein / Alban Berg Violin Concerto - To the Memory of an Angel / Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 3 in D minor, Adagio

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Product Description Mozart did not write the Requiem as despairing funeral music for his impending death. Rather, the piece proclaims eternal light and redemption. Together with a first-class quartet of soloists, the choirs of the Bavarian and Swedish radios and the distinguished musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado uncovers this more hopeful and forgiving essence of the Requiem. Review The baton is not a magic wand it cannot join together the fragmentary work that Mozart composed in the face of death. Yet, in Abbados hand, the baton could become a guide to the mysterious, sublime, consoling legacy of Mozart. --Deutschlandradio Kultur "The undisputed focal point here is the conductor himself, whose soulful intensity, both heard and seen, makes this video an important complement to any of the fine recordings in the catalogue." --David J. Baker, Opera News, February 2014