An exciting young Dutch early-music collective takes on a 17th-century masterpiece Lenten devotion.

Membra Jesu nostri consists of seven cantatas which graphically depict the suffering of Christ and the different parts of his tormented body. The surprising beauty and integrity of the cycle as a whole lies in its combination of the strict Protestant North German style with that of the Italian school, the symbiosis of mystical outbursts and dancing, transparent and almost ethereal textures.

The Groningen-based Luthers Bach Ensemble recorded this in spring 2021, at the height of the pandemic, through which they have played as active a part in the city’s cultural scene as possible with socially distanced concerts and music-making. Formed in 2006, the LBE can call upon a pool of highly practised early-music specialists in both voices and instruments, as well as the longer Dutch history of historically informed performance praxis.

The stylistic pedigree of this new recording of Membra Jesu nostri places it alongside the great recordings of the cycle over the course of the last half-century. A fine balance is struck between the solemn piety of the cycle’s text and the assuaging pathos of its expression, with its many striking contrasts of solo and large-scale textures, its passionate outbursts and reflective melismas.

The booklet includes an introduction to the work plus full sung text and translation.

The ensemble’s founder-director is Tymen Jan Bronda, who has been the cantor-organist at the ensemble’s home of the Lutheran Church in Groningen since 2001. The artistic advisor and continuo player on this album is the distinguished Dutch harpsichordist Robert Koolstra, and the ensemble is led by Cecilia Bernadini (daughter of the oboist Alfredo Bernadini), who has also been the leader of the Dunedin Consort since 2012.