JS Bach and Reena Esmail - This Love Between Us

East meets West - JS Bach Magnificat and a recent work written to accompany it in the Indian classical tradition, Reena Esmail's This Love Between Us - Prayers for Unity.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Magnificat, BWV 243, is a setting of the canticle from Luke's gospel, scored for five-part choir and a Baroque orchestra including trumpets and timpani. It is the first major liturgical composition on a Latin text by Bach.

This Love Between Us is a piece about unity. Its seven movements juxtapose the words of seven major religious traditions of India - Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Jainism and Islam - and how each of these traditions approaches the topic of unity, of brotherhood, of being kind to one another. It is scored for the same baroque orchestra as the Magnificat, with the addition of Tabla and Sitar.

Conductor: Jim Bate