In April of 2007 the NBS will tour with Bach's B Minor Mass.  Click here for the complete schedule.

Hailed for its performances of “perfect clarity” and playing that is “lively and fresh,” the Netherlands Bach Society has maintained its status as one of the world’s pre-eminent early music ensembles for over 80 years.  Artistic director and principal conductor Jos van Veldhoven leads an exciting 2006-2007 season that includes the Society’s second-ever tour of North America with Bach’s stirring Mass in B minor (BWV 232), a monumental anthology of sacred music composed during the final two decades of the composer’s life.  Further engagements include performances of Karl Heinrich Graun’s celebrated passion cantata Der Tod Jesu in Utrecht and, throughout the Netherlands, performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the work with which the Society debuted in 1922.  Since that date, the Society has performed the Passion annually to Dutch audiences that reach upwards of 12,000, the events becoming a much-loved fixture of the country’s springtime musical fare. 

 The 2007 tour follows the Society’s triumphant 2004 North American debut performances, which the New York Times praised as “lithe and lilting but also muscular, imaginative, and spontaneous.”  Though the Society is primarily a Dutch institution, in addition to North America it has made successful concert tours throughout Europe and Asia, reaching audiences in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Norway, Sweden and Japan.  Across geographic bounds the Society is cherished for its fresh interpretations and wide-ranging programming that encompasses both landmark baroque works by such giants as Bach and Buxtehude as well as the smaller-scale, lesser-known works of their predecessors and contemporaries.  The probing nature of the ensemble has also motivated many first-ever present-day performances of compelling works that otherwise would have continued  to  repose in dusty archives.

 The Netherlands Bach Society gives about 50 concerts a year, half of which are conducted by Mr. Jos van Veldhoven.  The remainder sees collaborations with some of early music’s most esteemed artists, including Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman, Paul McCreesh, Jos van Immerseel, Philippe Herreweghe, Hermann Max, René Jacobs, Frans Brüggen, Andrew Parott, Monica Huggett, Roger Norrington, Iván Fischer, Paul van Nevel, Marcus Creed, and Masaaki Suzuki.  In addition to its thriving performance schedule, the Society boasts a discography of a dozen recordings with Channel Classics Records.  The innovative series includes works by little-known baroque composers of Dutch and Italian origin as well as great works by Bach and Buxtehude, and has been universally praised by critics.  London’s Sunday Times remarked about 2003’s Christmas Oratorio: “The performance is unfailingly stylish, moving in the retelling of the Nativity and appropriately joyful”; Classics today.com  called it “one of the most successfully made discs…heard in a very long time.”