This disc‚ offering not just three Bach cantatas complete‚ but an hour­long feature film‚ revealingly celebrates the unique pilgrimage undertaken by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his regular forces during 2000‚ to mark both the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death and the new millennium. The cantatas chosen were those for the 11th Sunday after Trinity‚ given in a concert at St David’s Cathedral in North Wales‚ the 40th of a monumental series that started on Christmas Day 1999 in the Herderkirche at Weimar with the Christmas Oratorio and ended at St Bartholomew’s Church‚ New York‚ on the Sunday after Christmas 2000. The three cantatas are very well­chosen‚ the outer ones from 1723 and 1724 respectively from Bach’s Leipzig period‚ the central one for soprano solo alone from 1714 when Bach was in Weimar. Gardiner characteristically relies on fresh young voices‚ with the Monteverdi Choir typically bright and incisive‚ and with the four soloists matching them in those qualities. Excellent as the tenor‚ Mark Padmore‚ the countertenor William Towers‚ and the young German baritone‚ Stephan Loges‚ are‚ consistently firm and clean‚ it is the Czech mezzo‚ Magdalena Ko½ená who wins first honours with her superb singing in the solo cantata‚ Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut‚ moving on the one hand‚ brilliant on the other. Aptly‚ she appears also in the St David’s sequence in the feature film‚ one of the 11 venues visited. The film is far more than a travelogue‚ even though each venue is vividly illustrated. Gardiner necessarily takes the starring role‚ explaining the sequence‚ delivering one obiter dictum after another – as for example on the shocking neglect of all but a handful of these masterpieces‚ or the impossibility of re­creating a choir exactly like Bach’s when the voices no longer exist‚ since boys’ voices break five or six years earlier than they used to in Bach’s day. Gardiner is even shown climbing a dauntingly precarious ladder up to the top of the tower at the wonderful perpendicular­style church at Blythburgh in Suffolk‚ another of the venues‚ where the motet‚ Jesu meine Freude‚ was given. You also see the party arriving by plane in Orkney for the concert in Kirkwall. They then go on to what Gardiner describes as the spiritual climax of the whole experience‚ the concert given on the exact anniversary of Bach’s death‚ July 18‚ in the isolated Church of St Columba on Iona‚ a place of worship for 14 centuries. The seasons are illustrated too‚ not just August at St David’s but winter in Cologne and New York‚ bringing home the seasonal aspect of Bach’s sustained celebration of the church year. The film is framed by a preparation sequence‚ in which the Prince of Wales makes an appearance as patron of the enterprise‚ and a final summary with singers and players contributing. Finally Gardiner himself understandably reveals that thanks to this year­long experience ‘my priorities in life have changed’. It is a disc to have you eager to hear more of the cantatas.