The beautiful duet "Wohl mir Jesus ist gefunden" fell into my hands by chance, and after playing the first bars it was immediately clear that I would record this beautiful piece for you: Here now is the result of a rather elaborate recording.
We hear the 3-manual organ St. John Cantius in Krakow, Poland, built in 2004 by Jacek Siedler, in a rather thin registration. The duet itself is for an alto and tenor voice, which are close together and therefore allow for many parallel third/second passages, as well as frequent overlaps. This results in a very homogeneous sound for the solo voices, which are contrasted by strings, oboes and basso continuo. Remarkable is a change of time from 4/4 to 3/8, which effectively underlines the joy about the found Jesus. In addition to the change of time signature, I have also added a change of registration and tempo, so that the effect of joie de vivre is further intensified.
The following can be said about the cantata itself:
Bach performed the cantata in his first year in Leipzig on the Sunday after Epiphany (Epiphany of the Lord), 9 January 1724. The musicologist Alfred Dürr assumes that it was written as early as Weimar,[1] while John Eliot Gardiner supports this view for movements 1, 4 and 7.[2] The prescribed readings were Rom 12:1-6 LUT and Lk
2:41-52 LUT, the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. The unknown librettist takes the parents' search for their lost son as an occasion to depict in the first two movements the situation of a Christian who has lost his Jesus and is searching for him in vain. The third movement is a chorale; the second verse of Martin Jahn's Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne, in which Jesus is asked to return. Movement four repeats the request in a personal aria. The answer is given by the Vox Christi (Voice of Christ) with the words of the Gospel "Know ye not that I must be in that which is my Father's?"