Scroll through a century of highlights

On Good Friday 14 April 1922, the Netherlands Bach Society gave its first performance of the St Matthew Passion in the Grote Kerk in Naarden.

Schoonderbeek’s successor, Evert Cornelis, refused to perform an unabridged St Matthew Passion. After much consideration, the board decided on a performance of the St John Passion instead. However, it brought in much less income.

The oldest photo in our archive of a performance of the St Matthew Passion in Naarden appeared in the newspaper de Telegraaf on 31 March 1934. We see the choir of the Netherlands Bach Society and the Utrechts Stedelijk Orkest, conducted by Anthon van der Horst.

In 1938, the Netherlands Bach Society acquired a Flentrop organ, which was placed in the choir of the Grote Kerk in Naarden. For many years, the organ served as a continuo instrument in the performances of the Mass in B Minor and the annual St Matthew Passion. The organ is still in the Grote Kerk.

In 1942, the German occupation introduced an institution called the Nederlandse Kultuurkamer. Singing associations like the Netherlands Bach Society had to join it in order to continue their activities legally. The Netherlands Bach Society was forced to join the Kultuurkamer in 1942 and had to turn away its Jewish choir members.

In the past, there was both reserved and free seating for the St Matthew Passion. Outside, the audience jostled for a good place, and when the doors opened they streamed in to find a seat with a good view.

Shortly after World War II, the Holland Festival was founded as an international performing arts festival, focusing on both classical and contemporary music. The Bach Society regularly performed music by Bach at this festival, thus gaining more recognition in the Netherlands and abroad.

In honour of the visit from Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, the audience were filmed around the church and at lunch in the interval, by Mrs Moes-Spakler, a board member of the Bach Society.

In 1957, the first LP of the St Matthew Passion was recorded by the Bach Society. The recording was made in the Grote Kerk in Naarden.

To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Bach Society, a big Bach festival was organised in the autumn of 1961.

"There was only one authentic performance and that was the first one in Leipzig”, said Charles de Wolff about the St Matthew Passion.

In the 1960’s and 70’s, Baroque music was increasingly performed on instruments from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, or copies of them, but this was not the case at the Bach Society.

In June 1973, this recording of Bach’s cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis BWV 21 was made during the Holland Festival.

After World War II, the Bach Society gained international recognition, partly through participating in the Holland Festival. As a result, the choir was regularly invited to give concert series and perform at festivals abroad.

In 1980, an LP of the St Matthew Passion was released on the record label COrneMUse. The Bach Society released several recordings on that label.

In the early 1980’s, a conflict arose about which artistic course to steer. The board wanted to go in a new direction, inspired by the authentic performance practice that was flourishing at the time in the Netherlands. The conductor Charles de Wolff decided to leave, with nearly the full choir of the Bach Society in tow, and founded Bachkoor Holland.

Three years after his appointment as artistic director of the Bach Society, Jos van Veldhoven conducted his first St Matthew Passion in Naarden. This was also one of the last times that the choir and orchestra sat behind the rood screen. In 1989, the stage moved to the centre of the church.

Under the artistic leadership of Jos van Veldhoven, guest conductors were regularly invited to conduct the St Matthew Passion in Naarden. Jos van Immerseel was the first, in 1984, followed by names like Ton Koopman, René Jacobs, Philip Herreweghe and Gustav Leonhardt.

In 1997, the 75th anniversary of the Netherlands Bach Society was celebrated. On 28 March 1997, the NCRV made an extensive documentary about the history of the Bach Society, which included interviews with musicians, audience, soloists, former soloists and conductors.

In July 2007, the Bach Society went on tour to the United States to give two concerts in the Seiji Ozawa Hall, at the Tanglewood Festival.

In the quest for the most authentic performance practice of the St Matthew Passion, Jos van Veldhoven experimented in 2010 with an asymmetrical stage set-up (choir I and II in unequal composition).

On Thursday 1 May 2014, the newspaper NRC published an extra supplement that was completely devoted to the launch of All of Bach.

In his final year as artistic director, Jos van Veldhoven presented the St Matthew Passion in TivoliVredenburg in an unusual set-up, with some of the audience seated in between the two choirs/orchestras.

Starting on 4 September 2018, the All of Bach videos have been published on the Bach Society’s YouTube channel. The aim is to reach a much bigger and more international audience. The channel was given the English name 'Netherlands Bach Society', and YouTube made the direct URL www.youtube.com/bach available for this channel.

A year and a half after the launch of the All of Bach YouTube channel, the milestone of 100,000 subscribers was reached.
A couple of months earlier, on 29 October 2019, the recording of the Cello Suite No. 2 – performed by Steuart Pincombe – was the first video to exceed the 1-million-view mark on YouTube.

In 2021, it was once again impossible to give performances of the St Matthew Passion, due to the continuing pandemic. Instead, it was decided to record the smaller-scale St John Passion in the Grote Kerk in Naarden, without audience. This television recording was broadcast on NPO 2 on Good Friday. This recording has also been published on All of Bach.

On the weekend of 20-22 May 2022, we concluded our centenary with the BACH Festival in TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht. The programme of this festival included a festively staged opening concert, a puppet theatre performance for children, a Bach Scratch, a crossover concert with Bach, jazz & improvisation and a multitude of activities on a specially arranged festival square.