J.S. Bach from Birth to Death

Australian arts writer, Shamistha de Soysa, joined our Bach Journey music festival, in 2023.

It takes years of meticulous planning to bring together The Bach Journey offered by Martin Randall Travel. This is evident from the programme, but also an observation made to me by Martin Randall himself who briefly joined the last Bach Journey in 2023, which I had the pleasure of undertaking.

Martin Randall Travel’s The Bach Journey is different to an annual single-city festival, or a collection of themed concerts and destinations. Rather, it is a rare, carefully curated, seven-day chronological pilgrimage from J S Bach’s birthplace to where he died. The nine exclusive concerts of music by Bach and others in his orbit are presented in historic and original venues in the towns where Bach lived and worked, performed by world-renowned exponents of Baroque music with expert tour guides and fascinating daily talks by scholar, writer and arts executive Sir Nicholas Kenyon. 

As a pianist, high-school violinist and former pro-am chorister, including a lengthy stint in an ensemble dedicated to performing the entire choral works of Bach, I had been immersed in his music since childhood. As a music reviewer of numerous performances of Bach’s music, I recognised that this was an exceptional opportunity. And there was to be another Bach Journey in 2026!

The 2026 Bach Journey has a similar unique itinerary but with its own exciting and notable variations. The most compelling addition is the performance of Bach’s second, third and fourth Brandenburg Concertos in the Schloss Cöthen, where Bach was employed at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. It is possible that these unique concertos were premiered here where the size and instruments of the court orchestra were well-suited to the concertos. The Brandenburg Concertos are a marvel of Baroque composition. Lyrical and innovative, they embrace a variety of styles and instruments. It’s not surprising that the second concerto was sent into space on the Voyager Golden Record in 1977, as a representation of human culture.

Performing the Brandenburg Concertos is the Dunedin Consort, under Professor John Butt OBE, conductor, keyboardist and scholar, who has led the ensemble since 2003 and who has edited the definitive Cambridge Companion to Bach. The Dunedin Consort’s recording of the Brandenburg Concertos was a Gramophone’s “Choice” in October 2013 and was a finalist in the Baroque Instrumental category for the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Professor Butt will join Sir Nicholas Kenyon as co-speaker.  

Period instrumental ensemble Spiritato and vocal group the Marian Consort directed by Rory McCleery join the 2026 line-up; elite choral ensembles Vox Luminis and Solomon’s Knot reprise the major choral works, the St John Passion and the Mass in B minor, respectively and Martina Pohl performs organ works in Sangerhausen. Hyperion recording artist and Opus Klassik 2023 winner Mahan Esfahani plays a keyboard program in Leipzig.

In 2023, I took the early option, arriving the day before the formal tour. Met by staff, we travelled by coach to Eisenach, the village where Bach was born. The extra day allowed me to discover the town at leisure, notably the Bach House, a repository of everything to do with the family. Welcome drinks on the first evening broke the ice with the rest of the group.

The opening concert was a virtuosic recital of J S Bach’s music by violinist Rachel Podger in the Old Town Hall at Mühlhausen, where young Bach worked in the stunning Divi Blasi church. Later, Vox Luminis performed music by the Bach dynasty in the reverberant, stunning Church of St George in Eisenach, which still houses the font at which Bach was baptised.

The coach trip from Eisenach to the two-night Weimar stay, journeyed via Ohdruf where we heard Mahan Esfahani’s exceptional account of the Goldberg Variations on a two-manual harpsichord – the instrument for which it was written. The afternoon was spent in Arnstadt where Solomon’s Knot brought its innovative style to a dramatised rendition of the St John Passion. 

The two concerts in Weimar, a performance of oboe and violin concertos by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Vox Luminis performing J S Bach’s exuberant Magnificat were sheer delight. 

The tour programme book is a substantial compendium with itinerary, comprehensive musicological notes, biographies, images, and texts and translations of the vocal music.

There is much else to discover, like Hausmann’s original portrait of Bach which hangs in the Leipzig City Museum, also the location of Wagner’s Bechstein piano. There’s the tower in Weimar where Bach was jailed, and the Wartburg, the Teleman stele and the Martin Luther House in Eisenach, the Mendelssohn House and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. 

Finally, it was on to Leipzig via Sangerhausen’s beautifully decorated Church of St James where Martina Pohl performed a selection of Bach’s organ works on the 18th century organ. Leipzig was the jewel in the crown with its twin churches of St. Thomas, where Bach is buried, and St Nicholas, where the St John Passion premiered in 1724. Bach held important positions in both churches.

The famed Freiburg Baroque Orchestra performed concertos and orchestral suites, followed after a sumptuous dinner by an inspired performance of the Mass in B minor by Vox Luminis in the St Nicholas Church with its pastel, palm-carved pillars, symbols adopted as the peaceful fall of Communism in 1989. 

The week sped past with seamless organisation and impeccable care. The coaches were spacious, food and beverages were plentiful and, like the accommodation, exceptional. The advantage of joining a tour originating outside Australia was that I met like-minded Bach tragics from Los Angeles to Auckland. 

For just one week I was able to cast aside all care and immerse myself in the life and music of one of the most brilliant minds in history and the very humble life he led. 

Book 'The Bach Journey' on our website, 28 September–4 October 2026.