No one knows for sure why JS Bach wrote the Mass in B Minor. It certainly wasn’t to be performed as part of the liturgy, either Lutheran or Catholic: the scale and duration (over 1 hour and 40 minutes) are too sizeable for that. Various theories have been put forward over the years. But perhaps, as Lindsey Kemp suggests in his well-informed programme note for this BBC Proms performance, Bach wrote it purely for his own satisfaction – or for posterity.
All of which makes a performance in concert a perfectly reasonable thing to offer. And to set the scene for this one, a stylish purple lighting scheme, with the pipes of the Albert Hall organ casting evocative shadows, provided a suitably atmospheric secular space.
