The Sweelinck Ensemble rehearse for Bach Vespers, February 2007.  Photo courtesy of Alan Symes

From The Times, Saturday 22 May 2004

Tim Martin: At Your Service.

Celebrant: the Rev'd Jana Jeruma-Grinberga presides. Guest sermon by Brenda Stewart, a Lay Reader.

Architecture: ****Wren church, attractively restored after the Blitz.

Music: ***** The highlight of the evening. JS Bach's Ascension Oratorio, plus numerous suites, motets and a clutch of lively hymns. Bach services monthly.

Spiritual high: **** God is gone up with a shout! Just so

After-service care: *** With all this music, who needs it? Tea, coffee and cake, for a small (and optional) donation.

Seven o'clock on a Sunday in the City, with the heat of the sun soaking up from the pavements, and even the tiny Postman's Park just north of St Paul's Cathedral is deserted. Almost opposite, a tiny sign points the way to the Lutheran church of St Anne & St Agnes. "Bach Vespers, tonight, 7 pm".

Music has always been an important part of the Lutheran service: why, as the illustrious founder himself is believed to have said, should the devil have all the best tunes? Luther composed hymns and hymn tunes, while Bach wrote much of his music for the Lutheran service. And the Lecosaldi Ensemble, the standing army of musicians based at St Anne and St Agnes, is carrying on the tradition in great style.

(..........)

We take our seats in the calm belly of the church: cream walls, wooden panellling, with the Ten Commandments reproduced behind the altar flanked by the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. On the wall gleam the royal arms of Charles II. The musicians are packed into the south side of the church, with the glitzy organ behind them and a smaller harpsichord and organ jostling for space.

They take their music seriously here. Before the service even starts we have a suite for oboe, strings and continuo; then the choir leap to their feet and crack off a motet; then Peter Lea-Cox, the donnish looking cantor, harpsichordist, conductor and organist nips round the corner and shakes the dust from the organ pipes with a resounding prelude. As if at a prearranged signal, the worshipper rocket to their feet and begin the first hymn at what seems to me a ferocious pace.

We make our way through Luther's setting of the Apostles' Creed, then it's the gospel reading - Mark xvi, as Jesus rebukes the disciples for their 'unbelief and hardness of heart' before ascending into Heaven. Then the sermon, by Brenda Stewart, a lay-reader in the Church of England and a former member of the Lecosaldi Ensemble. Though her sermon is more of a chat and a brief introduction to the cantata, she encourages us to consider the human benefit of this particular arrangement of service and music. The Gospel is proposed, then a sermon adds to it: then a musical setting invests the same story with indiviual and dramatic meaning. She emphasises the grief of parting from one's Saviour, urges us to consider the disciples as men, with men's feelings, not as constructs in a story.

What a pleasure the Ascension Oratorio is. These musicians are all freelance professionals, operating for a derisory fee, and the continuance of these monthly services - full settings of Bach's music, in its original litugical context - entirely depends on the generosity of the congregation. No charge is made, though a donation is suggested. And the musicianship is truly superb.

Still to come, of course, are the sung responses, a race through the wonderfully-named Wipo of Burgundy's Victimae Paschali  and a positively eye-popping improvisation from Lea-Cox, whose verve seems no whit diminished by the hour and a half of continuous music he's been making. Dismissed with "Christ is risen! Alleluia!" we stumble out into the twilight. Tea and cake are being dispensed for those who would like it, but many seem to prefer to digest their musical feasts in peace.

' "Beautiful" is a common sentiment. "I shall be coming to the lunchtime concerts", says one woman quietly to her companion. "If it's all like this, I'm going to become a Lutheran", says mine.'

20 years of Bach Vespers at St Anne's Lutheran Church

St Anne’s celebrated the 20th anniversary of Bach Vespers at 19.00 on Sunday, September 29, the festival of St Michael and All Angels. Peter Lea-Cox and the Lecosaldi Ensemble will lead the music at this special service of praise and thanksgiving for two decades of a remarkable monthly series. Cantata 19, “Es erhub sich ein Streit” (There arose a war), which Bach wrote for Michaelmas, was included in the service. The Ensemble  performed Cantata 50, “Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft” (Now is come salvation and strength), which consists of one chorus which remains from a lost cantata which Bach also composed for the day. Cantatas are musical sermons based on the appointed scripture readings for the Sundays of the church year.

When The Rev’d Ronald T. Englund, who  preached at the anniversary service, began Bach Vespers with Peter Lea-Cox on September 26 1982, no one dreamed that the series would continue for 20 years. “Anglican clergy in the City of London warned me that no one would turn up.” Pastor Englund recalls. “They told me that even St Paul’s struggles to get a congregation on Sunday evenings.” In preparation for the London Bach Vespers, Pastor Englund visited Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York City, where Bach Vespers had been held for several years.

More than 120 people filled St Anne’s for that first Bach Vespers which was led by Pastor Englund and the Very Rev’d Robert Patkai. Cantata 161, “Komm, du süsse Todesstunde” (Come, O sweet hour of death) was a cantata appointed for the day. The monthly Bach Vespers became part of Lutheran Special Ministries, an outreach programme of St Anne’s, which was directed by Pastor Englund.

Peter Lea-Cox explains that “emotionally the music is ungraspable. “You unwrap a layer, and there’s another one. The music’s enduring qualities are sort of a miracle.” He adds, “Bach’s work can be enjoyed as great music, but it has a deeper meaning as a spiritual experience and an expression of joy.” The Lecosaldi Ensemble completed performances of all Bach’s 195 remaining church cantatas in January 1997. They are now within 20 of reaching another milestone: singing all 389 of Bach’s chorale harmonizations in Bach Vespers.