John Eliot Gardiner takes us to the castle of heaven

The long-awaited return of John Eliot Gardiner In front of The Constellation, three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 12, 103 and 146) were eagerly awaited, both for what it represents among the music-loving public and for the proposed programme, intended for the third Sunday after Easter and composed in different years (1714, 1725 and 1726).

Author of a reference book on Bach and translated into Spanish by Acantilado with the title Music in the Sky Castle (2015), Gardiner emerged in this concert as a master of architecture, elegance, nuance in every phrase, and the purest and most sincere spirituality, in front of an extraordinary ensemble, both instrumentally and chorally. The Constellation is a true music-making machine (in a good way). And it features simply superb soloists, such as violinist Kati Debretzeni, flautist Rachel Beckett, and harpsichordist and organist Paolo Zanzu.

Gardiner says in the aforementioned essay that Bach's music is "a mirror that vividly reflects his complex and rugged personality, his eagerness to communicate and share his worldview with his listeners, and his unique capacity to embody inexhaustible invention, intelligence, wit, and humanity." Exactly. And in Wednesday's concert, Gardiner was able to recover that mirror and make it explicit thanks to his undisputed leadership.

The union of the three cantatas, with texts that followed one another thanks to the supertitles, was a high-flying ethical and aesthetic experience. It featured excellent vocal soloists, starting with countertenor Alexander Chance and continuing with the members of a heart that can soar without wings.

The beginnings of the cantatas BWV 12 (Wine, Klagen, They arise, Zagen) and BWV 146 (Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal) were some of the moments we will preserve in our concert memories as true apotheoses of the emotion that can be evoked by a musical event that deserves to be enshrined in capital letters. Given Gardiner's precise and aristocratic gesture, the resulting sound reached traces of indisputable transcendence.

We live in turbulent times. We live in a framework of societies that are increasingly stupid in their polarization. More cretinous in their use of violence. More unpleasant in their digital control of the individual. In dystopian times like the present, Bach's music, served with such intelligence and sensitivity, is more necessary than ever. Writes friend and colleague Oriol Pérez Treviño in his book Bach in times of pandemic (Dinsic, 2022): "There is another world that we are also invited to delve into through the practice of silence; of knowing how to still the mind; of living fully in the here and now; of listening attentively to Music." Perhaps, if we listened to a Bach cantata every day, the world would be different. For an hour and a half, John Eliot Gardiner and his musicians invited us, through Bach's music, to enter a new constellation, grafted with joy, beauty, and infinite peace.