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"The musicianship is outstanding and is certainly one of the best performances that I have heard ... All music lovers should own and play Bach's B Minor Mass ... this release is beautifully presented and a joy to hear." - Cross Rhythms During the final years of his life, Johann Sebastian Bach created the monumental body of music that can be considered his “testament," including the Mass in B minor. The work is a perfect synthesis of all his skill and flair in the art of composition, as well as his gift for invention and his extraordinary sense of form, structure and number. This is a live recording of the Mass in B minor performed in July 2011 at l'Abbaye Sainte-Marie de Fontfroide in Narbonne, France during the sixth Festival of Fontfroide. Considered to be one of the most remarkable of all musical utopias, it is a Catholic mass written by a Lutheran composer, which does not fit into the liturgies of either the Catholic or the Protestant tradition, and yet it remains one of the great masterpieces of all time. Conductor Jordi Savall handpicked for this recording an "academy" of young singers destined for careers as solo professionals. Twenty-seven young musicians from 12 countries were selected by open public competition. Savall adapted the number of singers in each section of the mass, in his first recording of a vocal work by Bach. "The B minor Mass is a true challenge for any musician because of the work’s immense spiritual and aesthetic dimension, and also because its perfect balance between virtuosity, emotion, purity and eloquence scales such giddy heights of musical language that it attains to the highest and most universal expression ever achieved by man. The work distils the wisdom of an entire lifetime, combining past (stile antico) and present (barocco and galante) to offer us an insight into the future of a musical language that is truly universal and transcendent." - Jordi Savall, conductor