J.S. Bach: Johannes-Passion, BWV 245

Throughout the work, word paintings transform the images conveyed by the text into music: tears, lacerations, the trembling earth, but also essential words which, as in the cantatas, are subjected to melismas, accentuations, harmonic inflexions, and the choice of concertante instruments such as the viola d’amore, the viola da gamba, the oboe da caccia or the lute. This deeply rhetorical and dramatic music is dotted with powerful and vivid images intended to strike the audience.