ENSEMBLE CORRESPONDANCES
SEBASTIEN DAUCÉ, direction
Special Event
Bach Early Cantatas
December 9, 2026 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Long before the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Mass in B minor, there was a young organist in Mühlhausen, absorbing everything the German motet and cantata tradition had to offer. This program traces that inheritance directly: chorale-based motets by Johann Christoph Bach and Franz Tunder, the very models the teenage Bach studied, set alongside three of his own earliest cantatas, Aus der Tiefen rufe ich (BWV 131), the funeral cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (BWV 106, the “Actus Tragicus”), and the Easter cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4).
Returning to San Diego for the second of two concerts this season, Ensemble Correspondances is joined by star mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot, whose singing in the Tunder and J. C. Bach motets promises to be one of the most affecting moments of the SDEMS season. Hearing Correspondances twice in one residency is a rare chance to experience the depth of an ensemble that lives inside this repertoire.
Ensemble Correspondances appears with the support of the French Institute in Paris. Supported also by Albertine Music, a program of Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation, and by the National Music Center in France.
