Bernard Labadie Shifts from Mozart to Bach

Conductor Bernard Labadie (photograph by Winnie Au, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Conductor Bernard Labadie made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 2005 and has been making regular visits since then. His most recent visit took place in November of 2024, when he presented a program devoted entirely to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This week he prepared another single-composer program, this time surveying the sacred music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The program began and concluded with two significant choral compositions. The program began with a slightly belated account of BWV 249, the Easter Oratorio. This is one of Bach’s less familiar compositions, and last night’s performance was the first ever given by SFS. (It is also significantly shorter than many of the more familiar major sacred music compositions.) The concluding selection was the BWV 243 setting of the “Magnificat” canticle. Labadie provided this performance with an “overture” in the form of the opening sinfonia for BWV 29, the cantata Wir danken dir, Gott. Unless I am mistaken, this was the first time that Labadie prepared a program of sacred music since April of 2008, when he presented two choral compositions by Joseph Haydn.

Last night saw a solid account of all three of the selections. Labadie charted just the right course through the many diverse dispositions that Bach brought to his sacred music. He devoted equal attention to the instrumentalists, the vocal soloists, and the chorus, all of whom seemed to be perfectly satisfied in following his lead. The soloists were soprano Joélle Harvey, countertenor Hugh Cutting, tenor Andrew Haji, and baritone Joshua Hopkins. It may seem a bit “out of touch” to refer to a performance of sacred music as “refreshing;” but it was that aspect of Labadie’s rhetorical stance that made the listening experience engaging from start to finish. Sacred music can do justice to liturgical passages without being somber about them, and that was precisely how Labadie approached Bach’s music last night.