(Comfort sweet, my Jesus comes) for soprano, alto, tenor and bass, transverse flute, oboe d’ amore, bassoon, strings and continuo

With the opening notes of cantata BWV 151, we find ourselves transported to the very Elysium so longingly sought in the closing sections of “Wachet! Betet!” (BWV 70). Each Christmas, for a fantastic moment of hope, this ideal state outside of time is delivered into this world – a world that no matter how ravaged and defaced is the only one we have at present. In the birth of Jesus Christ, we may recognise the child we once were and whose life-changing presence and clarity we easily forget amid our meetings, activity reports and other self-imposed chains of bondage and drudgery.