CCMusic.com

"If all the world's depressed people had somehow been squeezed into St John's to hear this concert, the pharmaceutical companies would be out of business. Who needs pills to lift the spirits when we have the six Bach motets, and John Eliot Gardiner's Monteverdi Choir to sing them?" the Times. Thirty years on from their acclaimed recording for Erato, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir return to the Bach Motets in a new SDG recording, taken from a concert in London last year. The Motets can be seen as some of Bach's most perfect and hypnotic compositions. Through their extraordinary complexity and density, they require exceptional virtuosity and sensitivity of all the performers. The album is packaged in a hard back book containing a 44 page booklet with original notes by John Eliot Gardiner and texts in German, English and French.