The First Lutheran Church of Boston will hold two choral Vespers services during the week of the 2017 Boston Early Music Festival.
The first of these services will be the next installment in FLC’s Bach Vespers series. Our Bach Vespers for Trinity Sunday will take place Sunday, June 11 at 5pm with a 4:30pm prelude recital played by Thomas Sheehan of the Harvard Memorial Church. Music rendered by the FLC Choir and Baroque Orchestra will include Johann Sebastian Bach’s festive cantata for Trinity Sunday, Gelobet sei der Herr, BWV 129, a large concerted Magnificat by Samuel Scheidt, and Jacob Handl’s Trinitarian motet Benedicta sit sancta creatrix. The Reverend Adam DeGroot, most recently of Philadelphia Lutheran Ministries, will preach on the historic lessons for Trinity Sunday, which include the famous discourse between Jesus and Nicodemus concerning the Sacrament of Baptism in John 3.
The second service, on Friday, June 16 at 5pm will feature the return of Canto Armonico, directed by Ulf Wellner. Canto Armonico will present a celebratory Vespers service for the Reformation Jubilee of 1617 as it might have been celebrated that year in Dresden. Several Psalms, motets, and chorales by Heinrich Schütz and Michael Praetorius will adorn the service, and the Reverend James Hopkins of the Lutheran Church of the Way in Raynham, MA will preach.
