New Trinity Baroque to perform all-Bach concert

One of the joys of Atlanta’s classical music scene is New Trinity Baroque, a small professional ensemble that specializes in music from the 17th and 18th centuries. The group began in London in 1998 and moved its base here in 2003. NTB, which performs all over the world, is part of the “historically informed” movement, so its instruments and playing style are intended to replicate what baroque audiences heard.

On April 12, the eve of Passion Sunday, the group will present a concert featuring early cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, along with some of Bach’s organ works. The program is titled “Soli Deo Gloria,” or “solely for the glory of God,” the words the devoutly Christian Bach used to sign all his works.

According to Predrag Gosta, the founder and artistic director for the ensemble, three of the cantatas were written in the period from 1704 to 1708, so the earliest was completed when Bach was 19. The fourth dates from 1714. All are rarely performed, but there is considerable range in them, from an Easter cantata to a wedding cantata. All will be performed using a chorus of only four singers, just as Bach used. Four distinguished soloists complete the roster.

Shannon Gallier, the new organist at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, will play the organ works on the church’s Rosales organ, now in its 10th season.

This concert, the final one of NTB’s Atlanta season, was originally planned to feature Bach’s “Saint John Passion,” a relative rarity though it is one of the composer’s greatest achievements.

“It’s a very ambitious work,” Gosta said. “To use the forces that Bach used is just bigger and more expensive” than the typical NTB concert, requiring almost a doubling of everything, with most of the performers having to be imported from around the globe. So, for budgetary reasons, the St. John was postponed, and this concert was assembled.

“In many ways, this better fits the occasion,” Gosta said.

Hearing Bach played and sung by New Trinity Baroque is a moving and profound experience. St. Bartholomew’s, where the concert will be held, has some of the best acoustics in town, the better to savor NTB’s spare and precise approach that emphasizes the polyphony of Bach, where different melodic voices are being expressed at the same time, giving the music a multilayered sound.

To hear the same music performed on modern instruments with greater vibrato and larger forces, usually slowed down somewhat, is to lose much of the clarity that allows the listener to hear each strand of music clearly. It’s just mushier.

The smaller forces of NTB, which include the exact number of players and singers used by Bach or other composers for the piece at hand, also work better for the type of voices best suited to this kind of singing. In general, baroque voices and singing techniques don’t generate huge volumes of sound, so having a smaller ensemble in a smaller room makes for easier balances.

A recording is planned for this concert.

There is surely no better way to experience Easter than with Bach. And New Trinity Baroque is an extraordinary way to hear Bach.